


Hysterical

by Ophelia_Raine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Doctor/Patient, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Genital Stimulation, Hysteria, Let's All Pretend This Is Normal, Masturbation, Medical Kink, Medical Procedures, Multiple Orgasms, Petyr is a maester, Sansa is a Guinea Pig, Science Experiments, Vaginal Fingering, Vibrators, genital massage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-07-20 18:38:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16143143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ophelia_Raine/pseuds/Ophelia_Raine
Summary: Maester Petyr Baelish is Westerosi's 19th-century wunderkind and heavily sought-after physician for that which ails the likes of Lady Sansa most dreadfully: that most perplexing of female afflictions, Hysteria.Unfortunately for all concerned, the Maester's magic hand is slowly developing a repetitive stress injury.





	1. Chapter 1

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/44291964014/in/dateposted-public/)

Maester Baelish had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or deteriorated. He had dewormed a whore, leeched a hypochondriacal Duke, liberally dosed a highborn lady of easy virtue with moon tea, and saved a drunkard’s tooth. There were no surgeries today, which pleased our healer. It wasn’t that he was afeard of blood; he simply did not enjoy the mess of it. If he could command the cosmos, he’d decree that all deaths should be clean ones. Blood was notoriously a bitch to purge from Yi Tish silk, after all.   

It had been a satisfactory day, though a rather unusual one. His case load had offered a variety he seldom could enjoy of late. For Maester Petyr Baelish has become something of a specialist in the last twelve-month. Especially after the repeated squealing of his most loyal and persistent patient, the Lady of the Vale. 

For if anyone in the Seven Kingdoms should be a poster child for _Hysteria_ — that most perplexing disease which only preys on the tender sex — then Lady Jon Arryn _née_  Tully must surely serve as its paragon.   

“Gentle strokes…” he murmurs now, watching with a clinical eye as his midwife brushes the length of Lady Arryn’s loose and wrinkled slit, thumbing down slightly at its apex. “Keep up the rhythm… always keep the rhythm. And the pressure. It is the repetition that ultimately coaxes the paroxysm. If you should find yourself rubbing dry, brush the vulva with the oil of lilies using your left hand. Keep the bottle near your side, so you may never break contact or you might as well start again. That’s it.” Petyr twists his lips as he watches his midwife strum his patient like a cheap bandora. “Good girl,” he grudgingly allows, nodding his approval.  

Lady Arryn lets out a groan.  

“Oh but I _am_ good,” she gasps from behind the curtain, straining her neck to chance a glimpse of the good maester who is wise to stand just far away enough so neither he nor his patient should catch sight of each other. “Oh but Petyr,” Lady Arryn whines again, “you _promised_ that you’d let Nurse Ros learn for a while and then you will minister to me yourself!” 

“In a little while, Lysa,” Maester Petyr soothes, still intent on his tuition. He notes his prodigy’s improvement with something akin to pride mingled with an almost physical relief. She will never be as good as him, of course. The very thing that is her boon is also her burden: she knows how to touch another woman just as she touches herself. But unless his patients preferred the company of the fairer sex, the ministrations of Ros the Midwife will always be inferior to that of the handsome and debonair doctor standing beside her. 

Sensing an impending change, Maester Baelish urges Ros to quicken now and with the minutest of nods, instructs her to slip two fingers into Lysa's oily channel. The Lady groans her deepest gratitude, her voluminous skirt bunched over bony knees, her buttocks lifting off the leather recliner.  

“Oh Petyr,” she is panting now like a worn-out dog. “I feel strange! Will you not attend me now? Will you not comfort your friend?” 

“Nurse is doing a splendid job,” he returns mildly.  

“But it is you that I want!” she cries, shaking her head this way and that. Petyr raises an eyebrow, Lysa's indignant desperation merely serving as irrevocable proof to him that the crisis of her disease is drawing near. 

With a sigh, he waves his nurse away with a deft flick of his hand. Ros dutifully withdraws her slickened digits so as to allow the maester room for one of his grudging own. Whereupon both of them jump and wince when, feeling the change of guards below barracks, Lady Arryn releases the most joyful screams of pleasure. 

“O Petyr! O Petyr! This is most wonderful! O my heart! Oh touch me again, I love your beautiful hands!” 

And so it is done. Maester Petyr Baelish retracts his hand calmly and turns to the waiting wash basin as the Lady of the Vale trembles and shakes and swears — for the second time this month — her unfailing love for him, for his hands, for his heart and even his cock. He is wise to ignore it all, of course. It is the same with all his patients. Words are always the emptiest when the genitals are feeling so terribly full.  

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/44962888662/in/dateposted-public/)

It is a disease that plagues the fairer and simpler sex, an illness most constant that has perplexed and consumed maesters for thousands of years.  

Hysteria. Its list of symptoms are as innumerous as the maesters who study them: fainting; bloatedness; nerves; insomnia; sensations of heaviness in the abdomen and pelvis; shortness of breath; strange dreams and wild, unseemly fantasies verging on the whorish; loss of appetites including the lack of interest in one’s marital bed; the tendency to cause trouble for others — especially one’s immediate family… 

Word in the Citadel and the Small Council is that the malady is more prevalent than ever, its reach ever-growing from the least of them in Flea Bottom right to the royal chamber itself. No woman can be guaranteed immunity, it seems, from the clutches of this heinous and fickle condition, its source and cause so dastardly difficult to pin down.  

It was once thought that marital happiness is the only cure, but alas… every maester has a story of visiting with a wife who has been strongly and constantly encountered by her husband only to suffer greatly from this affliction nevertheless.  

Other cures have been posited, of course; universal remedies hopefully pleasing to both wives and widows, singles and the celibate. Vigorous horseback riding is one. Strategic movement of the pelvis in a garden swing another. The edge of a rocking chair has brought its own successes and a long and bumpy carriage ride from Gulltown to Runestone was rumoured to have done Lord Royce’s buxom daughter a world of good.  

But by far, the most effective — albeit temporary — cure for the disease is the massage of the vulva by a maester or a midwife until the patient is aroused to the paroxysm and finally expels her corrupt humours from her womb — often into the waiting palm of her ministrant. Where appropriate, the insertion of a finger is recommended. It is medical canon.  

Even then, many maesters struggle to remedy their patients in this manner for in practice, the cure can be as singular as the woman. It takes time and skill to properly ascertain the intensity of massage for each patient and then immense stamina to sustain the treatment long enough to produce results. In this regard, Petyr is exceptionally gifted — he has such beautiful surgeon’s hands, he’d always been told, so nimble and expressive and _knowing_ — and as such is able to attract a prodigious number of returning patients. Indeed he already enjoys something of a reputation in King’s Landing. His jealous competitors sneer and call him  _Littlefinger_ but the epithet only improves his humour, much to their chagrin.   

_’Tis a strange world we live in,_ Petyr thinks to himself when Lysa finally leaves his clinic long after they are shut, when his midwives and nurses tidy the rooms and turn the gaslights low. For in spite of prevailing medical wisdom on the matter, Maester Petyr knows only too well what truly ails these women. And how he is nothing more than a man gainfully employed to finger other men’s wives and daughters. What a hoot! And _such_ easy money to be made: a practice — nay, a _business_ so lucrative with an inexhaustible demand for a solution that is both bloodless and safe.  

_’Tis all nothing but a clever sleight of hand,_ he smirks darkly to himself.  

If only it wasn’t such a bloody bore at times. And protracted. And fatiguing.   

* * *

A plain carriage stops in the quiet alley and a young woman alights, taking in her surrounds with a wide-eyed vigilance that betrays her nerves. She is alone and her footsteps are quick and light as she climbs the short stair to survey the door before her. A quiet breath, in then out. She lifts the brass knocker and raps sharply once, twice. The carriage waits patiently behind her and she turns to stare at it now like a rabbit contemplating a safe and familiar burrow. 

The thought flits across her face as time stands still and the seconds drop. She resists the compulsion to knock again but she flicks a desperate look at her coachman.  

The heel of her boot slips over the step and it is all the encouragement she seeks to take a step down. And then another. And another and another... 

“M’lady,” a nurse greets at the door, and the young woman freezes as though she were caught fleeing from a crime. “M’lady, welcome.” The nurse is young and pretty, her voice is warm, her hair red as her own. "The Maester has been expecting you.”  

“Miss,” the young woman corrects and clears her throat. “Miss… Alayne Stone.” She had rehearsed her name.  

Ros eyes the young woman before her and knows at once that the name is a lie. Sansa Stark’s beauty is renowned not just in King’s Landing, but in all the Seven Kingdoms. Her blood is blue and old, her dejection by the crown prince infamous, her sudden and miraculous change of fortune through marriage the song of every bard from here to Essos. This here is no lowly maid, untitled and ordinary. This here is someone ethereal and lovely. Even the auburn of her hair glows like a demi god's.   

“I beg your pardon,” the Lady says, stepping into the kitchen. She had asked for discretion and the clinic had sent a note back with her handmaiden to come by the alley. “I know I have trespassed on the maester’s kindness; I am very late.” 

“Not at all, Miss,” Ros lies for in truth, the Maester had been under a dark and stormy cloud for most of the afternoon. He often says he has very few virtues. Punctuality is unfortunately one of them.  

“Should I leave?” Sansa looks suddenly stricken yet curiously relieved and Ros hastens to straighten her own face.  

“No… Miss,” she replies quickly, guiding the Lady to the parlour. “The Maester has been busy attending to others, but he is ready for you.” Ros takes a steadying breath to calm her nerves. In truth, she had been loathed before to disturb the Maester. But that was before she knew the true identity of their patient.  

“Wait here… Miss.” And Ros flicks her a final smile to reassure before turning quickly to the Maester’s private quarters. He had already retired early, leaving the last few patients to the nurses. This does not bode well, Ros thinks. Nevertheless, she presses on. 

“What is it now!” Petyr snaps, tugging his coat to hide his hand, still wrapped tight in wet bandages. 

“Your patient has finally arrived.”  

“Did you not tell her I am out?” 

“I did not,” Ros confesses and stiffens when the Maester spins around in his chair to glare askance at her. 

“Why the devil didn’t you!” 

“I thought you would like to treat her.” 

“You _thought?_ ” His voice has turned to honey and Ros swallows thickly but she holds firm. 

“She is not who we thought she would be.” 

“Riddles,” Petyr purrs dangerously. “O _fun_."   

“She is Lady Loras Tyrell, Maester. Lord Stark’s daught—“ 

“Cat’s girl is _here?_ ” And the Maester comes to life, springing up from his chair, his injury all but forgotten even as Ros glances at the binding and bites her lip. 

“Should I send her away?” Ros falters, suddenly unsure. “You are tired…” But the Maester waves his troubled hand dismissively.  

“’Tis the usual complaint,” he replies, shrugging on his coat. “Let us not keep the lady waiting…” 

They emerge from his room, the Maester’s steps brisk and determined as Ros picks up her feet to follow him. The door to the clinic lies waiting at the end of the short corridor and Petyr twists the knob, his curiosity piqued, his heart strangely loud in his ears. 

The Lady has vanished. 

“Where is she!” Petyr demands even as Ros runs to the kitchen and out the back way. Lady Tyrell is already stepping into her carriage and it is all Ros can do to stop her when she calls out.  

“Miss! Miss Stone? Oh heavens, _please_ forgive me! Don’t go!” 

At the sound of her alias, Sansa hastens all the more, tugging angrily at her skirts when they catch in the door. The poor midwife is already red in the face, her hair loosened and flying from her cap in her exertions.  

“I do beg you, please stop! The Maester wants to see you and he’ll be most crossed if I lose ye!” Ros pants and it is the only thing that moves her. Sansa stops tugging at the cotton, looking out her carriage window instead to regard the pitiful nurse. 

_It is hopeless,_ Sansa sighs to herself. For everything today had conspired against her if only to honour this very appointment. It is her own fault, she knows. She had sought the Maester herself and made every effort to be careful and discreet. And yet here she is and all she yearns to do is to run back to the known safety of Highgarden. 

_It is the hysteria,_ she reasons with herself. Such wild misgivings, mere figments of her overwrought imagination. The irony that her illness would be the very thing impeding her reach for the cure.   

She need not stay if she should loathe the treatment or the man, she reminds herself as she ascends the steps once more, as she wends her way through the kitchen and back into the parlour. And if he should insist; if the maester should be a pompous braying old thing or worse — a bully most unkind and insistent, well then Sansa hopes she would be firm. She may present herself a mere Miss Stone but she is every bit a highborn lady. This man is not her equal, she tells herself even as she quietly wrings her hands. _Do not let him dismiss your complaint like you are nothing. A foolish little girl._

She is past the parlour room now and led into an office with a desk and bade to sit and wait. The room is clean and capacious, masculine but stylish with surprising modern touches — the wallpaper looks new, the furniture imported and eclectic. _So not a doddery old windbag then,_ Sansa surmises of her healer with a small huff of relief. A secondary door leads into another room deeper still in the bowels of this building and Sansa guesses that the maester conducts his treatments and surgeries in there. She feels a twinge of comfort that she would be far removed from the parlour where other patients might sit and hear her whispered confessions. 

Sansa's nerves start to flutter again with every tick of the clock and she wills her spirit to calm. _How very like a King's Landing man_ , she finds herself seething, _to keep her waiting as if her time were frivolous to waste!_ She swallows again and starts to eye the door to freedom, imagining her path to the carriage once more… 

A sound from the room behind her, and the knob turns sharp before the wooden door swings open. And there enters an arresting man — handsome, dapper and lean with a beard neatly trimmed and eyes that pierce her very soul.   

She watches as his mouth falls open and realises only later that it mirrors her own. Words have failed them both.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm BACK! And slowly getting on the writing saddle again. This fic. I've been reading up on the treatment of Hysteria in antiquity and you know what? It's a mad, mad world. I'd initially planned for this to be a shameless one (finger) shot but now I'm a little immersed in the world. Also, I am crap at writing old-timey so this is taking me a while to pull together, but it's a lot of fun.
> 
> I've missed you all! Talk to me! How've you been?!


	2. Chapter 2

_Is Cat come back?_ Petyr’s heart cries even as the words die in his throat, his mouth agape like a fool's. 

She is a ghost, he thinks. An apparition. 

A vision. A sight to behold.

Sansa shakes her head and he in turn stirs from his stupor.

“Forgive me for the wait, Miss…”

“Stone.” Her voice is soft but clear. It carries across the room and caresses his ear like a soft summer breeze. “My name is Alayne Stone.”

“Of course,” he replies, taking in the lie as if it were the truth. She stands as he holds open the door to his surgery, his eyes never leaving her. He doesn't dare blink, lest she disappears once more.

“Please,” he gestures to the daybed while he eases himself into his wingback. He notes the straightness of her back, her hands clasped demurely on her lap, her silk gown pristine and pretty. He watches as she discreetly studies the room, as her gaze lingers on the surgical leather recliner.

“Tea?” Ros asks because he had told her to, and Miss Stone comes to life. There is something to do with her hands now and for that, she is most grateful.

“Camomile,” he explains, sipping his own. He had slipped in a single drop of Nightshade to calm her, covering it over with two lumps of sugar.

“I do like it sweet,” she smiles at him now, grateful. “This is most agreeable."

“Then I am thankful,” he smiles softly. “For I did not ask after your habit. It would have been a small travesty had you preferred your tea like you prefer an old septa…” His mouth tilts up in the corner with humour. “Dark and bitter.” 

A moment, and he watches as her face breaks into the loveliest smile, as the eyes shine in shared mischief for a second before she blinks away. But it is enough; she sips prettily now and looks content. And as he stares, he sternly reminds himself that _he_ is the one schooled in the healing arts of hypnotism, and not this slip of a girl who lies so very badly even while she wears his Cat's beautiful face like an imposter. 

“Leave us,” he tells Ros after a time, when the cups are empty and the silence had grown companionable. Ros raises an eyebrow askance but then she has long learnt not to question her maester — especially in front of a client; she takes the tray and slips soundlessly out the door.

Petyr regards his patient now, his eyes curious but gentle. 

“And what is your complaint, my child?” For she still is a child, compared to him. 

Sansa takes a shuddering sigh. “I have been feeling… irritable.”

“Oh?” he asks benignly. 

“I have been short… with my h-… with my family. And impatient. And unkind. And all this while… there is an emptiness. Or a… a… an inclination to be somehow… well…”

“Where is this emptiness?” the Maester gently probes. "Are you hungry?”

“It is hard t-to explain,” Sansa stutters, hating how she sounds to her own ears. She had promised herself not to _decrease_ , not to act the little girl. She is a woman now. Even if only in name. 

“So this emptiness… it emanates from the womb, perhaps?”

And it is all that Sansa can do to nod emphatically, her face suddenly hot.

“How old are you, Miss Stone.”

“I am not yet twenty, Maester.”

“And you are a maid?”

She feels herself flush all the way up to her ears and the maester has to lean in when she murmurs, “I am.”

There is a pause and she watches as the maester stills, as a curious expression flickers across his face before he looks up and straight at her. 

“Miss Stone, I am a maester, not a septon,” he says, his voice low and pleasant. “You can tell me anything that ails you and it will be sealed as if in the tightest vault in all of Braavos. This is a confessional that requires no penance; I have taken an oath as a maester. As my patient, you have my sworn fidelity to your confidence. You need not keep secrets from me. In fact, as your maester, I implore you not to. It is for your best health,” he adds quietly. 

“I understand,” Sansa manages to say. “I am a maid,” she maintains.

Petyr nods, carefully noting her confession, his quill moving swiftly across the page. “I see,” he hums and calmly regards her. “Miss Stone, I believe you are a sufferer of Hysteria.”

She does not seem at all alarmed by the pronouncement. Quite the contrary; her shoulders drop infinitesimally and she lets out the breath she had been holding in.

“What is the treatment, Maester?"

Petyr clears his throat. “There are several,” he begins as he always does. “There are exercises one can do at home… Do you ride?”

“I do indeed,” Sansa supplies readily before shaking her head in resignation. “My _Chestnut_ is a mild old thing, and she helps but a very little.” She lowers her voice, her dulcet notes suddenly confidential. “I even tried riding the biggest stallion in our stable _astride_ ,” she confesses in a whisper. “When no one was looking, of course. The stablehands had an emergency to attend one afternoon and I took my chance and stole away with _Midnight_. We were gone nearly an hour, but I returned from our caper feeling sore and more out of sorts than before.”

Petyr’s face is a picture of perfect understanding, but at her earnest account his hand grips his thigh like a vice as the sudden vision of Sansa swims into private view. Naked, her fiery hair flowing free behind her like Godiva, creamy legs spread wide astride the bareback of her beast, her hips undulating in time to its wild gallop, her eyes closed, breasts young and round, cunt rubbing… rubbing… 

“The most common and efficient treatment of your condition, Miss, is the massage by a professional,” Petyr hastily supplies. “Technique and quality vary from practice to practice, of course. But in my clinic, we insist on the latest scientific methods.”

Sansa nods again more agreeably. “That is why I sought you out, Maester Petyr,” she enthused. “I have heard your praises sung often. Your efficacy is well known.”

“You are kind,” he murmurs, affecting a tone of humility. “Pray tell, who has been spreading such scandalous falsehoods!”

She laughs, which makes him smile behind his hand. “Well, my aunt Lysa appears to be most taken by your bedside manner.”

_She teases me,_ he smirks to himself, even as something in his chest feels warm. He ignores the slip of her tongue, her subterfuge all but destroyed from the casual revelation of her close relation. She makes for a terrible spy. 

And then suddenly, and quite seriously—

“I fear I am broken and cannot be made right,” she whispers another confession, her eyes such bottomless blues that he has to fight not to stumble and drown. “I fear I have left it too long, that my body will not right itself. I fear I cannot heal…"

“Hush,” he scolds and is thoroughly appalled at the thickness of his voice when he continues with, “You are not broken. See here — you have made the best choice today! You have come to _me_. You will see… there is a secret lock within you and when it is undone, your deepest potential will be revealed and you will be brought to the full pinkness of health.” He smirked. “You’ll see.”

“What will it be like?” Another whisper. “Right at the end… this fullness of health, when the remedy is applied. What will happen to me?” And this time, Petyr sits back in his chair, his face thoughtful as he picks his words.

“The paroxysm, you mean? You will know you have reached the crisis when it happens. It is quite a singular event and hard to miss. As for what might happen immediately after... some women experience a temporary loss of their faculties. They experience a kind of fainting spell — only very short. There is a noticeable flushing of the skin, which is the pinkness of health I had alluded to earlier. Some women report a desire to fall asleep. Some, in fact, do.” He stops short of telling her about the voluptuous sensations. The utter loss of control. The embarrassment and confusion that frequently follows. 

“What do I have to do?” She turns and stares again at his leather recliner. “How should I prepare?”

He stands now and offers his hand, which she takes after the smallest of hesitations. He leads her gently to the leather recliner and is gratified when she dutifully sits. Wordlessly, he lifts her legs and gently arranges her, glad again that his instincts had provoked the early dismissal of his watchful assistant.

“The massage of the pelvic organs is a long and gentle procedure,” he soothes, as he washes his hands in warm water, as he brings the movable curtain around and divides her bodily this way. “A task that should only be entrusted to those alone who have clean hands and a pure heart.” He leans forward and lifts her skirts, and he hears the sharp inhale of breath but her body remains pliant. Their eyes meet over the curtain for the briefest of time. 

“Miss Stone, I am a consummate professional and very highly experienced. Do you trust me?”

"I do, Maester.” 

“Good,” he says, leaning away now so that all which remains in view are her petticoats rucked over her knees, each dainty ankle hanging on a leather stirrup, creamy thighs spread apart like a dark fantasy, her sweet little cunny still covered from his sight. For now.

“Lie back,” he instructs her firmly, “try to calm yourself and think on Westeros.”

* * *

_A maid!_ he continues to think, his hands expertly stroking her sex, warm languid circles rhythmic and attentive. Each little gasp from the other side of the curtain serves as his only guide to his progress.

A maid. He had examined her person and was so surprised, he took to shining another lamp on her to be sure. But there it was: her maidenhead, still intact and unbreached. And a swell of feeling came and went. Astonishment. Pity. A little anger, some consternation, and a stirring deep within his loins. 

His treatment regime was augmented on the spot. He cannot touch her channel for fear of breaking her maidenhead himself in the attempt and thus exposing her desperate malady to her limp-wristed husband. _So_ , he thinks to himself wryly, _the rumours are true after all_. Loras Tyrell, a stiff poker player even though he'd won the affections of the most beautiful woman in the world. What a gamble she'd made and lost yet again!

Almost as if to atone for her loss, he dips his fingers in oils of lily once more, the pot of his very best grade for the task at hand. He liberally covers her now, soaking in the sight of her tawny bush slickened and sleek, his thumb still working her bud, his fingers trailing up and down her inner thigh. Relentless and gentle, gentle and relentless... He feels her hips move once, twice. She is striving now, searching for something unseen and her silent manners war with her want, her need. He senses that she is getting close.

"Are you alright, Miss Stone?"

A pause before a struggled, "Yes..." 

"If you are in any way uncomfortable," he reminds her now, even as his thumb quickens to a flicker that causes her to gasp, "you need only say the word and I will stop."

"Oh no..." she moans.

"No?"

"I am not uncomfortable." Her breath catches again in her throat as he focuses on the tiny, secret pearl now slightly engorged. 

"But you wish me to stop?"

"No!" she cries before she hastily corrects herself, slightly ashamed. "I beg your pardon, Maester..."

"There is nothing to forgive."

"Please... continue." Another quiet moan.

"I am guided as much by you as you are by my hand, Miss Stone," he explains. "The treatment is bespoke to the individual. And for the best result, you must participate more fully."

"Fully?" Her bewilderment is endearing. Petyr swallows a chuckle.

"Tell me," he says as he slows his hand infinitesimally and is instantly rewarded by a sound of dismay. "What do you think will bring on the cure? How would you like me to assist you?"

"I would not know such a thing!"

_Poppycock._ "Trust yourself, Miss Stone. And trust me. Whatever you say in this room will not be repeated."

He slows his thumb even more, the rubbing descending lower. He starts to blow gently on her glistening nub and feels his breeches tighten when he hears a strangled sob. 

"Please," she whispers. "Could you reach a little higher again?"

"Higher?" he asks, his thumb drifting northward but hardly north enough. She starts to shake her head, and he catches a glimpse of her mane sprawled and wild from beyond the corner of the curtain.

"A little more," she begs and he dutifully obeys, using her own juices now to coat and slicken. 

"Like this?" And she starts to whimper. 

"More movement — if that is allowed, Maester."

"A treatment bespoke to you," he reminds before he quickens his tempo once more. There is a hush, a silence. And then she starts to groan.

"This is... aah!" she cries, her toes pointing sharp, every muscle in her beautiful long legs starting to clench.

"Tell me, Alayne," his rasp low and urgent. "What do you want!"

"Only more," she gasps and begs. "Quickly! Oh quickly... oh quickly... oh please, _quick quick quick quick_   _quick_   _quick_  — OHHHH!"

The stirrups strain and shake as she quivers, as she lifts her hips clean off the leather, the silence eerie and unnatural until the air is punctured by a choking cough cut short. He rubs her through it, using most of his fingers now — his hand is a blur and even though he starts to feel the familiar sharpness, he grits his teeth and continues, stretching out that exquisite moment of pleasure until he hears her draw breath like a drowning woman dying for air and he knows the crisis has come and gone.

She draws her legs in, shaking off the stirrups suddenly and then he hears it: the sound of her wretched sobs.

Before he can think to stop himself, he brusquely yanks aside the curtain and comes to her, pulling her curled body into his embrace even as she weakly fends him off. 

"No!" Her voice is thick with shame and he knows, he _knows_. He has seen it a thousand times before: the guilt, the shame, the abject mortification. As a seasoned maester, he has paid witness to some of the most genteel, proud women of long lineage suddenly rain all manner of filthy cusses like a common dock worker when the womb purges. Sansa's crisis was hardly alarming and yet he understands the shame, especially when she had lost hold of all her faculties in that blinding, exquisite instant.

He holds her tight and it is only the barest sliver of common sense that stops him from kissing her hair, her face, her eyes, her cheeks, her ruddy lips so swollen from biting down her confusion.

"There, there..." he murmurs instead, rocking her as she sobs into his chest. "You are safe and sound now, Sansa. Hush..." he murmurs into her hair, "'tis perfectly natural. You did so well, little one. Hush, there now..."

Slowly he rocks her, slowly they rock as one until the sobbing abates, until his own heart slows, until their bodies still and nothing but silence covers them thickly like a cloak.

And then she pulls away from him, her movement fluid, the panic rippling just under the veneer of calm and  propriety.  She breaks away from him and she runs from his surgery, his room, his clinic, his life.

He does not pursue her. Not even for his fee.

* * *

He thinks about Sansa for a fortnight and a day. There is no escape, no reprieve; wherever his mind, his eyes think to rest, there she would be, taunting him like a mirage. He would close his eyes wearily at day's end and find himself dreaming of her. 

He can hardly believe how embedded she has become, how chronic, how persistent the intrusion into his life. The worst of it is how she has begun to affect his trade. It is as if she had leeched his practice of all that once made it interesting to him; he is now impatient with everyone and everything instead.

Just as he is now with the cow on his examination table.  

Lady Myranda’s infamy began in earnest after she had so worn out her husband that he had given up the ghost in their marital bed. Since then, she had come to Petyr once a sennight to sit on his hands.

More times than he can count, Petyr had urged her, just as her father still does, to remarry again; to find herself a man with a sturdier heart and who could match her ardour. Even make her with child, as should be the way. To which she would always reply, and only partly in jest, “I’d rather be ardently matched by my maester.”

“You do know I’ve taken vows,” he would always patiently say. “I have sworn off women, Myranda. You know these are my orders.” And she would pluck at her nipples with a lazy, knowing smile. 

He looks at her now, as her breasts heave in the way they do before she lets herself be overcome and he cannot imagine now how he had once mildly contemplated a tryst. He looks at how she writhes, her fleshy body convulsing, his fingers sunk deep in her flesh and all he feels is repulsion and lassitude.

It is not just with Myranda — it is with _everyone_. And therein lies the way to decline and oblivion, Petyr frets. For as a maester invested in the art of relieving hysteria, Petyr had always been able to summon and harbour a kind of attraction, a form of professional lasciviousness for each of his patients. That alone used to make for most of the advantage he enjoyed over the rest of his august colleagues. He could always bring on the fit of the womb easily and quickly because he made himself believe, at least for a brief moment of time, that he _cared_. 

But now he is merely methodical — no better than Qyburn. Worse still when he finds himself irritated and bored like Varys.   

After taking twice as long on two of his regular customers, Petyr’s agitation finally compels him to close the clinic early. He sends his nurses away, insisting on the solitude and the privacy to brood and plan. But when the solitude only conjures memories of Sansa on his table, Sansa in his arms, Sansa overcome… Petyr surrenders even the solitude and prepares instead to return to his workshop to tinker. 

He is about to turn down the last two gaslights when the front door chimes. “We are closed!” he shouts across irritably. But he spins around when he recognises her voice. 

“Maester Petyr?” Sansa calls, peering into his window. “Maester… I have come to pay my debt! Are you there?” 

She peers again into his window and barely makes out a movement in the background. The room is suddenly awash with light and it is another moment before the front door opens and the Maester stands before her once again. 

Again, her words disappear and her mind is a blank slate. He is dressed today in a dark grey suit that makes prominent the smokey tints of his ever-watching eyes. His silk cravat is crisp white and smart, his pocket watch different from the last. He looks altogether too distinguished and handsome to be a mere maeester, and Sansa feels queer once more, a touch lightheaded and unsure. 

He kindly invites her in for tea, and brushes her protests away with languid ease. “You need not take a session of my services to share a pot with me,” he insists and she watches with slack-jawed wonder as he adeptly brings out a tray of tea and biscuits, setting it beside her in his office.   

At first, the words stick to the roof of her mouth but he is so courteous and so kind, so animated and droll that her tongue finally loosens and even though she is not chattering away, the purpose of her house call is now more easily achieved. 

“I ran away, last I was here,” she reminds him softly now and red-faced. “I was embarrassed, I suppose. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It was such an extraordinary event and I felt… quite… overcome. Please forgive my rudeness.” 

“There is nothing to forgive, Miss Stone,” he insists. She meekly pays him anyway and he takes her money silently.  

“You call me Miss Stone,” she says now, and she makes it a point to study his face as she continues. “Last I was here, when you were comforting me… you called me by my name. You called me Sansa.” 

“That I did,” he admits, meeting her gaze. 

“You knew all along who I was!” 

“It is not unusual for highborn ladies to utilise a pseudonym,” Petyr explains. “It spares their reputation the scrutiny and slights that invariably come when a woman — especially a married woman — seeks a Maester’s hand. You do not have to explain.” 

Somehow, his very words inspire her to speak all the more. And speak she does, telling him about her farcical marriage to Loras Tyrell. _He knows everything after all,_ Sansa reasons to herself. _He knows I am still virgo intacta, even after a twelve-month of marriage. The Maester is not a foolish man._

She finds him sympathetic and patient, with listening ears far larger than any man’s has ever been for her. It is almost disconcerting, Sansa thinks. _I am in mortal danger of pouring out my soul, if only because he listens so well. It is as if he has truly marked my cares on his soul. Does the man ever blink? No wonder Aunt Lysa thinks him in love with her…_

He listens to her as the hour passes and he feels more alive than he has in weeks. She is loveliness — lovelier than even Cat, and the gods know how his love for that woman had once transcended all sense and scientific logic. More than once, Petyr wills himself to look away, if only to dampen the intensity of his gaze on her.  

Sansa’s anxiety and bewilderment is understandable, but Petyr wonders if she did not also suspect her young husband's penchant for other men. If she does, she does not say; good breeding and manners are probably the main impediment to such a confidence. Regardless of how and where Loras Tyrell prefers to lunge his poker, however, Petyr knows he is a fool not to take his wife’s maidenhead and put a baby in her. It should have been done from the very first, no matter how distasteful Loras may think of the act. 

Petyr half-shakes his head in consternation. As if any other man would choose not to dip his wick in her sweetest oils! He remembers his fingers on her slickness and feels himself start to fill in his trousers. Petyr noisily clears his throat. 

“Oh!” she exclaims, looking out the window. “It is late, of course! I have trespassed on your hospitality once more!”  

“You have done no such thing,” he scolds. “I had shut up the office early, and would have been left with every temptation to brood and wane on my own. This diversion is most welcome.” 

“You are very kind,” Sansa reiterates. “And you make a wonderful counsellor. How tired your ears must be!” And she almost reaches out to touch them, as if to drive her point home. Such a godsend that she thinks to stop herself in time. 

“How can I ever repay your kindness again!” she says now, standing up and brushing her skirts.  

“We can always find a way,” he replies lightly, and grins to show he means to tease. “You are far from Highgarden. How long are you in King’s Landing?” 

“Another moon, I suspect. We are here to watch the Tourney in honour of my husband’s sister and her betrothal to the King.” 

“Of course. Queen Margaery! We should have drunk our teas to her health.” Petyr hesitates before he adds, “Does it cause you much discomfort, seeing your former beloved soon married to your new sister?” 

And now it is Sansa’s turn to hesitate for in truth, it had been Margaery who had spared Sansa a lifetime of misery by taking her place and hateful, spiteful Joffrey's affections. Margaery had done it all for herself, of course; the crown is all but hers now, that and its power. Even Sansa’s betrothal to Loras had been arranged to seal Highgarden an alliance with the North. There is no love, there is never any true love when you are a Lady.  

“I am well,” Sansa eventually permits and grants Petyr a small but honest smile. “It is history now. I have my husband, and now the King will be my brother-in-law.” 

“The Tourney, you say?” Petyr suddenly asks. “I might have an idea of a small repayment, if you will permit me to ask.” 

“Please,” Sansa replies eagerly. “If I can grant your wish, consider it done.” 

“I’ve never been to a tourney,” Petyr muses. “I should like to see what the fuss is about.” 

“Done!” Sansa cries in triumph. “It will be only too easy for me to procure a place for you.” 

“I thank you,” Petyr smiles. “And do not worry — I am the soul of discretion, and no one need know why or how I am there. And if we should pass each other, it would be like we were strangers, wholly unacquainted with the other.” 

Sansa smiles. The Maester truly is a clever man after all. 

He watches as she fusses with her dress, as she gathers her parasol and her gloves, secures her hat and inspect her reflection. And all this while, his mind races to find a legitimate means to prolong her company.  

“Your confession today… about your husband… I want you to know, Lady Tyrell, that your secret stays with me.” 

“Please, Maester… call me Sansa.” 

“Then you must call me Petyr.” 

“I cannot,” Sansa smiles, looking bashful. “I hold you too high in esteem.” And he marvels at her confession, even as his secret intention starts to form into words. 

“And finally…. I must know before you leave — Have you been well?” he asks now. “I enquire both as your physician and friend. Did the effects of your previous treatment last to a satisfactory degree?” 

And again, he feels himself grow stiffer still when the colour returns to her cheeks and she blushes such a becoming pink, he longs to paint her. 

“It was most s-satisfactory,” she begins, “but I fear that its effects have since petered off. And with such a distracted husband, I fear I have regressed once more.” 

“Hmm… I may be able to fix you up quickly,” Petyr replies quietly, and without allowing her time to dwell on such tiresome concerns such as the time of day or _decorum_ , he ushers her into his surgery and straightens a grin when she rounds his leather recliner just as swiftly and hops daintily onto it, positioning herself carefully as before. 

_Perfection_ , he wants to growl but he busies himself by the ritual of boiling the water and washing his hands.  

_It is different this time,_ she thinks to herself as she feels his hand on her private place, as he oils and circles her folds. She is already feeling hot — she had been feeling flushed almost the entire the time she sat in his office, only too painfully aware of the door to this surgery, of what lay beyond, of how he had made her feel the last time she was here.  

And now that she feels his warm hands on her body, her most private folds, his finger tickling her inner thigh… It is the most delicious feeling, but the Maester had barely begun. And yet she senses that she is already well on her way to the splendour. 

“Ho…” she moans softly, though louder than before and finds she is instantly rewarded in his ministrations. _He responds to my sounds,_ she realises belatedly. _How else would he know, you silly goose!_ she chides herself. The Maester is stuck on the other side of this infernal curtain and he has already spoken of one action begetting the other. “This treatment is bespoke to your needs,” he had told her.  

She thinks she understands more fully now and this time, she summons the courage to sigh a little louder when he grazes a point of her flesh.  

“Once more,” she murmurs, “please…”  

_This is different,_ he thinks to himself. About a quarter of the time, compared to the very first treatment which had taken him just over an hour. But he has hardly any need for the oils, her natural juices already runny and slippery and well in abundance. The evidence of her readiness pools into his cock and Petyr bites back a groan as he grinds his own member into the edge of table, between the stirrups holding up those beautiful ankles. 

_I need to see him,_ she realises suddenly. It is disconcerting, being ministered to in this way, feeling his wordless reciprocity as she guides him with whimpers and sighs. She yearns to know… she yearns to discover how he looks, how he _feels_ as he coaxes her to crisis. _Is he unmoved?_ she wonders, _when I am so terribly, terribly moved?_ She stretches her neck, even as she feels herself on the cusp of a change… 

_Look at me,_ she wills. _Look at me… look at me please…_

_She is so quiet,_ he marvels. _I want to make her scream…_ But still he works her, his thumb starting to fly over her pearl of flesh. Silence still… _Has she been overcome? Is she screaming in silence?_ he wonders. Petyr chances a peek, leaning up and close. 

And just as he casts his eyes over the curtain, she looks straight at him and their eyes lock, a strong and unbreakable force that neither can resist. And then he watches as she closes her eyes, as she arches her back off the table, as her mouth falls open into a soundless scream. 

_My gaze had sent her over early!_ And the knowledge alone almost brings on a crisis of his own. Petyr snaps back behind the safety of the curtain and palms himself vigorously. It is agony, wondering if he should seek release or control. 

_But Sansa…_

He rounds the table and scoops and holds her again, and this time she lets him. He cradles her like a precious child and she turns her face towards his own. 

It would be the easiest thing in the world, he thinks, to drop his head right now and claim her beautiful mouth and kiss her. 

But instead, Petyr Baelish pulls away, for he _is_ the consummate professional after all. It is one thing to comfort a patient after the trembles of paroxysm… even though he has never before held a patient, not even one. Not until _her_. 

The kissing, though. The kissing would be indefensible.  

He pulls away gently, but his mind does not rest nor does his heart. They stay suitably alarmed and very much aggravated long after the candles by his bed burn out.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're OFF! (bada-boom-chh...)
> 
> This feels a little like 2 chapters smushed into one, and I had tossed up whether to split it into two or to just have it be the one. Anyhoo... it is what it is now! Also, I didn't plan on knocking this chapter out so quickly either. Huh. The smut. It just kinda rolled off the fingers and all.
> 
> Poll time: out of curiosity (and for my writing in future), do you prefer shorter 2,500-word chapters or longer ones like this 5,300 doozy?


	3. Chapter 3

The Conclave of Archmaesters holds its convention every year on the last sennight of Spring at the Citadel. And while many maesters are privately inclined to regard the event as a dreary imposition that dents their earnings, Petyr welcomes the pilgrimage. He is almost impatient for it, for it is always an event ripe with intelligence and opportunity; a chance for him to weigh the gold of his gifts and even to shine them. 

As it is, whispers around Oldtown suggest the Conclave has kept their eye on Petyr's considerable scholarship and advancements in the field of Hysteria. And while Petyr knows only too well that they all think him far too vain and young to be made Archmaester — for whoever heard of a maester being extended the Iron Key before he turned threescore and eight! — it gratifies him that his hard work and artful manoeuvring have not been in vain.

For it is not _their_ fellowship he longs to enter, but another: a seat at the King’s Small Council. Which necessitates the removal of its current occupant, Grand Maester Pycelle.

Petyr's ears prick up now as he discerns the doddery indignation of the crafty old fool himself, as the Grand Maester dialogues with the effete simpering and snark of none other than that spider, Maester Varys.

“A fifth — a _fifth!_ — of medical complaints across Westeros now concern the blasted wandering womb. The Hysterics are grossly misdiagnosed and should be committed to the asylum,” Pycelle insists yet again as Petyr privately rolls his eyes. “The vulvular massage is temporary relief at best — an insidious quackery and a mockery of our venerable institution worst of all!”  

“I do agree that the massage is a tiresome recourse,” coos Varys now, fanning himself even though a stiff breeze blows through the towers. “And each consult lasting more than a half hour is an encumbrance and a waste. The massage by hand is quite simply inefficacious.” Varys’s mouth twists into a smugness that suddenly commands Petyr’s full attention. 

“That is why,” Varys purrs, his airy voice cloying and confidential, “I am devising a better way…”

“Oh?” Pycelle grunts, unimpressed. “Two fingers like Baelish, instead of the prescribed one? Do not tell me you have chosen to be as lewd and reckless as he!” And Petyr wills himself to smile genially, even as he bristles.

“Tsk! The task of touching the womb with a single finger provides sufficient horror. I already find the entire procedure distasteful in the extreme,” Varys scoffs as Pycelle nods piously. "No — I speak of _industry_ , Grand Maester! Technology has much to offer, and I intend to harness its might in service of the medicine.”

“Oh?” Pycelle raises an eyebrow. “A mechanical finger?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Varys smiles, vastly pleased himself. But just as Petyr yearns to uncover the extent of his apparent invention, the Spider turns to face his most worthy adversary and call him by name.

“Baelish!” he purrs and extends a sweaty palm. “It is good to see you again.”

“An invention, I hear!” Petyr cries, discreetly wiping his hand down his robe. “How novel and exciting.”

“No more exciting than your burgeoning career built on fondling fannies,” smirks Varys darkly even as Pycelle wheezes his scandalised indignation anew before haughtily begging his leave. “You out-finger us all, Littlefinger.”

Petyr shrugs. “’Tis an honest living.”

“Indeed.”

But no matter Petyr's artful endeavour to measure the full design of the Spider’s web, Varys remains infuriatingly enigmatic about his little secret. It is a small blot on Petyr’s own project, though not insignificant; again, Petyr wonders at the timing of it. In almost every mark of progress that Petyr carves, Varys is almost certainly not far behind. He is a shadow that Petyr cannot shake. If Varys truly is working on a technological device to supplement or even supplant manual massage, then Petyr must renew his dedication to his own enterprise and beat his rival thoroughly and soon.

It _is_ uncanny, the timing of it. Petyr cannot shake the thought. For years, Varys had never alluded to such a thing. His scholarly interests tend towards the esoteric and theoretical, mechanical technology looked upon almost as the halfwit bastard child of the sciences. And yet here he is, taunting Petyr about an automated finger…

 _Has he a spy in my clinic?_ Petyr frowns. _Could one of my hysterical regulars be secretly kept in his books?_  

It would not be beyond the scruples of Varys, Petyr knows. Vengefulness and ambition married with ability and cunning make for a dangerous man, no matter how seemingly benign and amiable on the surface. In that regard, Varys is his equal. 

But not his better, Petyr vows.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45166444462/in/dateposted-public/)

He remembers her tea, remembers how she likes it sweet. Today, he has Ros bring in the lightest confection to ever grace her lips. The lemon icing melts in her mouth and each morsel sends her straight to the seven heavens. 

The tiniest moan slips from her throat. 

“You like lemons,” the Maester observes, his voice rough and gentle as always, his eyes ever sharp and never leaving her face. Sansa is both disconcerted and consoled — a war of feeling! — whenever she comes into his presence. But he never does her harm. Quite the contrary, in truth.

“Sweet and sour, like Life!” she confesses and is warmed by the low laugh. He never makes her feel like a witless creature or babyish or insignificant. With him, she never feels alone.   

“Then I am gratified,” Petyr smiles, offering another slice which she thinks to refuse until she does not. “Consider it a humble token of my gratitude for my seat at the tourney.”

“So you did go!” Sansa is delighted and surprised. “I had hoped for a glimpse of you, but we were seated farther away than I had anticipated. And then I wondered if you had come at all.”

“I was there,” he reassures her. “I saw everything. I saw  _you_ , my dear. Your husband is very handsome and formidable on the field. He is a knight any maiden would be proud to call her own. And with you by his side, Lady Tyrell, looking as lovely as you did that day… it is little wonder he had fought and won so decidedly that afternoon, if only to name his own wife the Queen of Love and Beauty.”

Something sours in Sansa’s throat at the words; she hastily looks out the window lest he sees for himself the change in her countenance. There is a quiet and some time passes before the Maester speaks again.

“Sansa… forgive me, m’lady… but I feel I must strongly recommend that you encourage your lord to take your maidenhead. I say this not to distress you, my child. Only to secure your continued happiness.”

She does not answer him and heavy seconds pass again before he speaks. “I have no doubt that the Tyrells have been patient out of every love for you—"

"It is only because my lord husband forbids them to speak of the deed. His passions grow quite violent when they do." 

He leans over and covers her hand with his own. The gesture is fleeting but effective. She is soothed enough to listen. "—But until your marriage is proven consummated, your position with your new family could be precarious should anything happen to your husband. He is a knight, after all. And a very good one, as we have just seen… But if your fortunes should suddenly change and he has yet to bodily claim you…”

“He will not lay with me!” she whispers now, as she turns away from the window to face him. “Maester, what will you have me do? I can only beg and plead so much before I am made ridiculous. And believe me, I already have!” She swallows the tears that seem her constant unwanted companion whenever she thinks on Loras. “I have made myself as desirable as I can… but if he will not look at me… Should I ply him with strong drink? The thought has crossed my mind, but I am no harlot to f-force myself o-on…” Words truly fail her presently and she bites her lip and shakes her head in helplessness. 

He holds her hand now and massages each finger slowly, small circles that comfort and heal. “There are other ways to secure his claim on you.”

“Th-there are?”

“Yes.” The Maester is all seriousness when he says, “Speak to your lord husband's conscience. He is not a silly man, nor a youth anymore. He knows his duty to you, he knows he shirks them shamefully. Be gentle with him, but also firm and pragmatic. And then… well… perhaps you could appeal to his other… musculature.”

He rubs her hand, her fingers, working each digit through steadily until he slows with her tallest finger. He strokes the length of it lightly, his gaze never leaving hers. “All he needs to do is break your maidenhead, Sansa. Then you are his.”

She stares at their hands on her lap, as the full meaning of his words take hold. A small shiver runs through her body, even as she starts to hope. Yes, she thinks. _Yes_. This might be accomplished after all.

The Maester pulls himself to standing now, languidly taking her hand in his as he leads her to his examination recliner. She lets him, falling in step dutifully, willingly. He helps her up and she wriggles into her place. Carefully he arranges her, slipping her shoes off one by one as he guides her ankle into each stirrup, as he parts her pale thighs this way without ever touching them, though the ghost of him haunts her flesh at their juncture.

And this alone — such a meditative preparation, such a calming routine… it only serves to increase her turmoil, to bring her into that private state of peculiar excitation.

He starts to wheel the curtain forward and she sees their approach from the corner of her eye. But before he can arrange the frame over her and drop the drapes, Sansa finds herself seizing upon the good maester’s hand.

“Could we… eschew the curtains today, Maester?” And she feels herself start to flush as he stills at her words before turning to stare.

“Do the curtains distress you, m’lady?”

“I… Are they indispensable to the treatment?”

She watches as the maester slowly bites his lower lip before they form a single word. 

“No.”

“I suspect the curtains are… an impediment to the speedy success of my cure.”

“You may be quite right,” he concedes, his expression inscrutable. But he wheels the frame back around the recliner and swiftly banishes it to its corner. 

Again, she feels that singular disconcertment, heightened all the more by the newness of her present view. Petyr stands at the foot of the table, his fingers slippery and nimble, his stare unflinching and unreadable. She drinks in his countenance, noting the symmetry of his moustache, the careful barber of his beard, the wings of silver at his temples that unfairly age him until one were privileged to encounter firsthand his fierce intelligence, glinting eyes, and restless vitality.    

And still he works her folds silently, methodically, applying a perfect pressure that seems made for her. She feels again that gentle cresting, that creeping voluptuous wave like the thickest molten lava come down from a brewing volcano. Her breath starts to shallow, little pants that he finally hears, now that he can look upon her face and read her lips.

“Come closer,” she whines. She does not understand how she dares to ask this of him, but she does. “Please… I want to look into your face.”

He swallows but he acquiesces immediately, never breaking his gaze nor rhythm as his glorious thumb circles around her most sensitive flesh, as he hastens to a frenzy. And then her breathing deepens tellingly, the rise and fall of her breasts marking the ascent of her profound agitation. As if governed by a passion beyond herself, she reaches out now and clutches his arm for strength. Their eyes drink each other in silent communion as he slowly leans down, as his shadow falls over her until he is almost hovering above. He does not say a word — he does not need to; his desire is writ plain in the flecks of his eyes and when his lips part, when she hears him draw his own ragged breath like a struggling man… her body, her soul starts to rend apart.

It is only now that she turns away, that she shuts her eyes tight and strives for control when there is nought to be found. All is white and nothing and the sharpest pleasure. Somewhere in the corner of her mind and through sheer determination, Sansa wills her mouth to close and clench, to never cry out. For if she does, she knows she will call his name.

* * *

The Hand of the King is renowned for suffering few fools and even fewer men of feeble ambition. It is therefore most encouraging to Petyr that he has held the Lord Hand’s attention and interest for nigh on half an hour.  

“A fifth of the realm’s medical complaints now concern the wandering womb,” Petyr advises Tywin now, borrowing Pycelle’s recent intelligence. 

“My councillors tell me you are something of a savant in that domain,” Lord Tywin replies drily. “Surely this state of affairs must be most agreeable to your chosen vocation.” 

“My material needs are met, m’lord,” Petyr attenuates modestly, even as he smoothes down his smartly tailored suit, the heavy signet rings on his hand catching the sun. “I am but one man, however. And there is no lasting cure.”

Tywin raises his eyebrow. “You admit, then, that this illness is nothing more than a figment of fanciful imagination from which you maesters gladly profit?”

“On the contrary, Lord Hand, it is an earnest and chronic malady that costs the realm precious resources. Hysteria is unpredictable in its symptoms, notoriously fickle, and tedious to remedy. But as it so happens, I am working on a panacea. One, I hope, that will spread the division of labour, if not revolutionise the treatment.”

“Spread the division of labour?” Tywin frowns. “Surely, Maester, you do not intend to rob your own house of its livelihood?”

Petyr shakes his head. “By my calculations, the afflicted easily outnumber the maesters ten thousand to one. This growing plague of complaint cannot be addressed in the traditional way. If every maester were to be engaged in the work of calming the womb, there will be none left to continue the work of chief import to the realm.” Petyr leans in confidentially, his tone careful but urgent. “The Grand Maester supposes that all sufferers should be thrown into the asylums. That is his preference. I cannot say that is supportable, Lord Tywin. The asylums will be full to bursting, and the realm will ultimately wear the cost of the upkeep.”

“Hmm…” Tywin’s frown deepens, but he shifts in his chair and rests his cheek now on his fist in contemplation. _There_ , Petyr thinks, _I have captured his imagination_. He smothers a grin of triumph.

“The Conclave has most recently announced their plans to increase the number of maesters fourfold in an attempt to assuage the growing demands of the realm,” Petyr continues. “However, rumour has it that the Archmaesters are reluctant to raid the Citadel's depleted coffers, and mean instead to extract the funds from Oldtown itself.” He lifts an eyebrow at the Lord Hand, who misses nothing of Littlefinger’s implicit meaning. With the impending marriage of Margaery Tyrell to his grandson, Oldtown’s fealty to Highgarden will mean that its considerable treasury will soon be within the Lord Hand's grasp. And King’s Landing could certainly do with a windfall after the previous fat King’s excesses.  

“And what is this enterprise you now devise?” asks Tywin finally.

“A medical contraption, one that can be administered by automation and with precision, thereby vastly reducing the time spent by maesters for the remedy.”

“Do you mean a mechanical massager?” Tywin huffs. “This is hardly revolutionary; Dorne has already trialed a mechanical rocking horse with a strategic protrusion, the Greyjoys swear by the baths and the douche as an effective water cure, and Pycelle tells me that Maester Varys is inventing a tapping instrument powered by steam. There is nothing new to offer.”

“The technology may be sound,” Petyr agrees, “but the maesters regard these inventions as mere savings of labour, all the while still insisting on personally controlling their use and therefore access to the cure. These contraptions you name are all cumbersome inventions locked up in factories, each unwieldy, indiscreet, and grossly uneconomical for the private buyer. But I mean to create a device beyond the use for industry. I mean to put the treatment in the hands of the infirm, so to speak. To empower the patient, and bring the treatment into their home.”

“So you _do_ intend to rob your own house of its security!” Tywin’s deep voice is accusing, but the Lord Hand is already steepling his fingers, the gold flecks in his eyes glinting as he recognises the economic potential and genius of the plan. 

“I suppose it matters little to you if the cure passes from maester to maid, so long as you stand to benefit both ways from the transaction,” Tywin drawls and Petyr allows a small smile.

“You are an astute man, Lord Tywin.”

“Do not patronise me with your flattery,” Tywin remarks, but he does not sound displeased. The Lord Hand flicks his fingers and a valet materialises as if from thin air. A word or two is spoken in private, whereupon two bags of gold shortly appear and are dropped into Petyr’s hands.

“See what you can do with this,” Tywin commands. The Lord Hand takes in the crafty intelligence of this unusually young dandy of a maester and considers his pecuniary talents. A maester and an economist! Tywin's mind drifts back to his Small Council and naturally considers his current pool of councillors. The Master of Coin is an able accountant, but he lacks the imagination that Petyr clearly possesses. Meanwhile, Pycelle’s loyalty to the Lannisters has remained consistent for years, although Tywin does not labour under the delusion that his steadfastness will outlast the Lannister’s influence and might. And the Grand Maester is ancient, as are his ways. His is a low cunning that Tywin merely tolerates but does not enjoy. 

Petyr smiles and bows low before turning to take his leave, his footsteps quick and exultant.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45166445302/in/dateposted-public/)

“Lady Lollys seems to have enjoyed her treatment today,” Sansa observes idly, before bringing her teacup to her lips. 

“No more than the usual,” Petyr muses, although his eyes are suddenly alert and take on a shine of merriment. “Do you know Lady Lollys?”

“We have not been formally introduced. She seems affable…” Sansa volunteers magnanimously, nibbling on her lemon shortbread to hide her sudden discomfort.

“Lollys Stokeworth is single and plain, placid and dull, morbidly obese, and thoroughly incapable of thinking for herself,” is Petyr’s summation and Sansa tries and fails to smother a satisfied smile.

It falls instantly at his next words, however.

“Lady Stokeworth, however, once held a relentless campaign to dissuade me from taking my Orders and to marry her fat little girl instead.”

“Oh!” Sansa cries. “You were courting Lady Lollys?”

“I courted no one… least of all Lady Lollys. Can you imagine? I would not be able to abide her in my bed. To hear her squeal like a stuck pig every other night…” Petyr trails off now, a hand reaching up to stroke his whiskers and cover his mouth.

They partake of tea and biscuits in thoughtful silence for a minute or two, even as the blood gradually creeps up the length of Sansa’s neck as Petyr’s words start to form pictures in her mind.

“Maester Petyr,” she eventually ventures to ask, “could I ask… How does the remedy work? What does the treatment accomplish in a woman’s anatomy?”

“You are asking after the theory of medical science?”

She flushes. “I know it is not my domain, for I am a woman…” But he brushes away the sentiment.

“I merely seek to clarify your question, Sansa. Yes… I can try to explain.”

He settles back in his chair and regards her, his expression thoughtful and almost pleased. “Hysteria, they say, is a disease of the womb. Most maesters are of the belief that the womb wanders the body causing trouble wherever it goes. It particularly enjoys wandering north and towards the fickle and faint heart of woman, and eventually it makes its way to the windpipe where the afflicted starts to pant and breathe heavily. This is always a sure sign of the crisis of the disease — the suffocation of the mother.”

Sansa nods along sagely. She is now well acquainted with these signals, after all.

“The massage… that is a method devised to coax the womb back down to its natural place by bringing on the paroxysm and in so doing, induce the body to readjust the balance of its humours by purging seed. I am sure you have heard that men purge seed and in so doing, put babies in their wives? It is said that it is the same for women: women need to purge _their_ seed, for letting them tarry too long in their bodies causes all sorts of mischief to the womb. The best method, they say, is by way of the marital bed. Failing which, we are usually the next recourse.”

He is quiet now, and he watches as Sansa solemnly digests his words. _She is not a dullard at all, and how can she? She is the daughter of Cat Tully,_ Petyr thinks. _Though even lovelier and... irresistible._

“The treatment… how did you learn?” she wants to know now. The subject is salacious as can be, but her genuine curiosity renders the question almost benign. “Do all maesters have to be schooled in the art?”

Petyr smirks. “There are textbooks and theories,” he replies. “Usually the use of a single finger coated with sweet-smelling oil is recommended, and it be moved well in a circle inside the vulva — that is, the flesh resting outside your private place, m’lady.”

“Circle... inside?” she asks, her voice suddenly hoarse. Petyr smiles gently. 

“That is the textbook. Eventually, we all find our own ways and means. But until circumstances change, the preservation of your maidenhead is my uttermost concern. I thought it wise to stay on the periphery of your folds, and not chance a breach. I could circle farther _inside…_ ” he explains, noting how her breath shallows, “…but if I should forget myself, would I be able to forgive myself after?”  

She swallows.

“On that count,” she almost whispers so he has to incline his ear towards her lips, “I have news.”

“News?”

“Your previous advice was acted upon… a-and well received by my Lord Husband. By his hand — and his hand alone — I am… I am no longer a maid.”

Silence as the full meaning of her words sink in and take root. And then he is leading her by the hand as they both abandon their teas and pleasantries, as he opens the door to his surgery. She slips inside soundlessly, already removing her gloves, her bonnet… The large kettle has been on a low simmer for some time and he washes his hands now. It is strange, but there is a small tremble in them. He wills himself to slow, but he feels as though all of him longs to burst out of his skin.

He lies her down gently, but this time he brings her arms to her sides. Her ankles are not in stirrups; they are lowered to rest directly on the recliner. He retrieves from one side of his table two long leather straps and her blue eyes widen as he places each one over her person.

“Do you trust me, m’lady?”

She should not, she knows. There is something about him. Something about this man that feels dark, unwholesome, _sensuous_. But she nods her head.

“I do.”

He nods curtly, fastening the straps to the opposite ends. “These,” he murmurs, “are purely for your personal safety, Sansa.”

She is cinched tight to the table, her arms pinioned to her sides, her legs spread so each foot meets the corner of the recliner. She is a prisoner and utterly at his mercy! And the realisation arouses a heaviness within her to descend with a rush and wet her sex thickly. It is almost unbearable, the weight of this waiting… 

He leans over her now and once again, their eyes lock. Blue in green, green in blue… And then he reaches up to her face and cups her mouth.

The moment he impales her… the moment she feels his finger slide within sure and strong and so  _very_ deep, she gasps and it is only by incoherent prayers to the gods and the last vestiges of intelligent reason that she bites back a moan. No oils are needed now: she is slick — there had been no pain. Far from it. She feels the length of his digit as he flicks into her and twists. 

And then his finger is joined by another.

The fullness of him! A tremendous feeling grips her anew as she moans softly into his hand, as her hips lift only to find her unforgiving constraints. The moment he presses firmly into her… The moment he rubs her repeatedly... Brutally. Relentlessly. The moment he pushes into that most responsive patch of a million nerves that sing and cry… He pummels and rubs her without mercy, without pause, his thick blunt fingers jabbing and bullying that most wicked spot, that secret of secrets she never knew could exist. 

And his eyes drink in her undoing. They never blink, only growing ever darker as he studies her distress, as he sups from the vision of her steady loss of control, desire wetting his lips.  

It is unbearable. She feels as though she could die and yet she is dying for this never to end as wave after wave after wave of tormentous intensity sweeps her along and dashes her into rocks and walls. She convulses — a single pulse, but her body is bound which only intensifies the crisis. Her channel contracts violently about his fingers as she writhes within her leather cage. And all this while, she is screaming into his hand. There is a gush and a release, an exquisite, blinding moment where she can think of nothing, only feel and feel and  _feel.._. 

It is the sound of her own fluids squelching against his slowing hand that brings her back down from the heavens first. By and by, she becomes aware of wet leather under her thighs and it is then she realises she has just made water. Sansa is horrified.

“No!” _The shame of it! No!_ She starts to thrash about within her confines, desperate to break free and flee from this room...

“Ssshhhh…” comes Petyr’s voice. “Your humours…” he gasps. “You have purged your seed, ’tis all!” 

Somehow, he loosens her ties and she struggles to free herself. The Maester turns, his back to her now and at first she thinks he is washing his hands as is custom. But he is hunched over the basin presently and it takes Sansa a moment before she realises that the Maester is in trouble.

“Your hand?” she asks, even as she watches as Petyr groans, his arm bent, his hand locked in a strange spasm, his other hand cupping his elbow and gripping so hard, his knuckles are white. Petyr’s face is a contortion of silent pain and all Sansa can do is ease him into a chair. She waits until the worst of it has passed, whereupon she takes his example those many weeks before and silently massages his fingers back to health. 

“I’ve broken you!” she starts to sob finally, unable to hold back her horror even as she takes his silent instruction and tries to bend his fingers back. “I’m so sorry!” she whispers, feeling monstrous that her cure had come at such a cost to him. 

“You did not break me,” he eventually finds the strength and breath to say. “’Tis an old complaint, although it has been a time since I’ve experienced such an acute attack. But then, I had a long day and have probably overdone it.”

“You’ve had such an attack before?” 

“Only after a particularly trying day of patients. Lollys alone took an hour, as you well know. And I had three such patients! But I do believe my condition is worsening.”

"But your livelihood!" she protests now. "You are a maester, a healer, a surgeon! How can you go on!"

She cradles his hand now as if it were a wounded bird, and something within the canny maester flutters and trembles at the gesture, even as he scoffs at his own foolishness. 

"I have known for some time that things must change," he confesses now, his eyes watching her closely as he starts to divulge this confidentiality. "For a year now, I have been perfecting a set of surgical implements to supersede the skills of my hands. They are not yet ready, although I am now confident of their eventual success. Thanks in no small part to you."

"Me?" Sansa is surprised. "How have I been your enabler!"

"By arranging my attendance at the tourney," Petyr replies simply. "I have been seeking an introduction with the Lord Hand for some time; he and I have known of each other through our respective notoriety and I had long suspected that his purposes could align with mine, given the right persuasion. We were finally introduced at the tourney, which led to a private interview a sennight later, which then led to a modest but crucial investment from the man himself. So you see, you have been most helpful already."

"Tywin Lannister!" Sansa is suitably awed, which gratifies Petyr. "Then you must have truly impressed him, for I know he does not part with his gold lightly unless it stands to most benefit him."  

"I am pleased with my progress," Petyr allows as another thought takes root and starts to sprout leaves. "It is ultimately a medical and scientific endeavour. I have fulfilled the question of production costs... but I now lack another answer."

"Tell me, if you will," Sansa entreats. "Perhaps I can assist you once again."

"Dear Sansa," Petyr smiles, "you have the most generous spirit."

"It is the least I can do," Sansa replies with raw honesty. "You have changed me, truly."

Again, he bites his cheek, her youthful candour charming him beyond words. _In the wrong hands, this woman might break like a brittle twig,_ he surmises darkly, thinking on the rumours of the young King. And yet she survived that inbred. _And yet she is innocence still._

"In any scientific research," Petyr begins slowly now, "there is a need to experiment, observe, and record. It is a never-ending cycle that allows us to refine our hypothesis until we produce a reliable result. I am in need of a test subject."

"And what of Ros, your midwife?" Sansa queries. "Or your other nurses... can you not rely on them?"

But Petyr shakes his head. "She is coarse," he explains. "None of them are highborn and for my needs, I require a lady with more genteel... sensitivities."

In truth, Petyr knows Ros will do just as well, if not better. She is accustom to the vocabulary he requires to inform his research accurately. But she is also under his employ and therefore compromised; he cannot trust her report for she will try too hard to please him, he tells himself. He requires honesty. 

"Are your implements... invasive?" Sansa hesitates.

"Only through the means you just experienced," Petyy replies. "There is no incision, if that is what you ask. My implements mimic the motion of my hands."

Sansa takes a deep breath. "Then let me be your accomplice," she declares. 

"Are you certain?" he asks, leaning closer to her. "It is not an imposition?"

"Far from it," she reassures him. "My husband welcomes any distraction I find. It will suit us both."

"I must pay you," he insists.

"I have yet to pay _you_ ," she reminds him now. "For services rendered me today. Surely your fees surpass anything you need pay a simple research subject like me!"

"Then I insist that they cancel each other out," Petyr replies firmly. It takes but a moment for Lady Tyrell to agree. She smiles into his eyes now and nods happily. 

"It is a deal," she laughs, sealing her new commitment with a proffered hand for Petyr to shake warmly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the whole theory of the wandering womb sounds as batty as an old spooky cave, then I've got news for you... it's historical gynaecological theory, apparently going as far back as Plato.
>
>> "Medieval texts rarely called the disorder in question "hysteria," although it retained its character as a disease of the uterus. Much of this literature recalled Plato's account of the uterus wandering around the body, causing problems as it went, particularly strangulation as it allegedly crawled up into the chest and windpipe. The panting and shortness of breath associated with the hysterical paroxysm, and eventually the disease itself, came to be called the "suffocation of the uterus" or the "suffocation of the mother." ~ Rachel P Maines, _The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria", the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction_. More on that book later on. 
>> 
>> "among the indications of suffocation caused by retention of sperm is the absence of male companionship in the life of a woman who was accustomed to it." [One of the treatments was] "to anoint the mouth of the vulva with different odoriferous materials, for which the prescription is also included, and to rub it into the neck of the womb as well. The rubbing, which should be done with the midwife's finger, will cause the womb to expel the sperm or corrupt humors and free the patient from disease." ~ Helen Rodnite Lemay, on Antonio Guainerio (d. 1440) and his account of female hysteria.
>> 
>> "the midwife would be instructed to use sweet-smelling oil on her finger and move it well in a circle inside the vulva." ~ Giovanni Matteo Ferrari da Gradi, d. 1472
>> 
>> "Of all chronic diseases hysteria — unless I err — is the commonest; since just as fevers — taken with their accompaniments — equals two thirds if the number of all chronic diseases taken together, so do hysterical complaints... make one half of the remaining third." ~ Thomas Sydenham, physician (1624-89), _Epistolary Dissertation_
>> 
>> "Those who are free'd from the fit of the suffocation of the womb either by nature or by art, in a short time their color commeth in to their faces by little and little, and the whole beginneth to wax strong, and the teeth, that were set, and closed fast together, begin (the jaws being loosed) to open and unclose again, and lastly som moisture floweth from the secret parts with a certain tickling pleasure; but in some women, as in those especially in whom the neck of the womb is tickled with the Midwive's finger, in stead of that moisture com's thick and gross seed, which moisture or seed when it is fallen, the womb being before as it were rageing, is restored unto its own proper nature and place, and by little and little all symptoms vanish away." ~ Ambroise Paré, surgeon (1517-1590)  
> 


	4. Chapter 4

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/30445348487/in/dateposted-public/)

She arrives an hour past midday on the morrow at the address he had printed neatly in his hand, his careful script adorned with stylish embellishments as distinctive as the man. It takes but two tentative knocks for the large wooden door to open for her. 

“M’lady,” smiles the Maester, bowing low. “welcome. I trust your journey was uneventful?” 

“I came by the way you instructed,” Sansa returns the smile. The Maester today is dressed down to his trousers and soft white cotton shirtsleeves, having divested himself of his jacket and vest from his exertions. He holds the heavy door ajar now; it makes but a sliver of a passage. And as she slips through the doorway, she cannot help but brush the width of his chest.  

The building is large and airy — a proper kind of workshop. The air is cool in here but not unpleasant, and well lit by a row of windows near the thatched roof. The noonday sun streams in now, catching the Maester’s shirt and casting strong lines of his very frame therein, still lithe and trim despite his age. She turns away now, suddenly aware that she had looked where she had no business looking, thinking thoughts no married woman ought to think. 

“Alas,” the Maester sighs now, though there is a spark of humour and —dare she hope? — a _fondness_ in his eye as he speaks, “I have no tea. No, not even a teapot.” 

Sansa laughs a little. “’Not even cake?” 

“No, not even,” he smiles. “I am ill-prepared to entertain polite and genteel company presently, it would appear. I do, however, have a store of mild ale.” 

She takes his lead to a corner of the expansive room and examines before her a strange brick platform, with three large and rotund structures each resembling a wooden kiln, metal pipes and taps leading in and out. She can only surmise this to be a private brewery, and as the Maester turns a tap at a large wooden vat, Sansa sees that she had guessed correctly.  

_I will need the courage,_ she tells herself wryly, and surprising the maester but herself all the more, Sansa accepts his proffered glass and imbibes a very little. 

“Mild, did you say?” she accuses after a muffled splutter, and he laughs, his green-grey eyes dancing.  

“Ay, and sweet,” he grins, “made toothsome with caramel and apples. Along with a hint of lemon, perhaps?” He winks. "For you see, you have changed me also.” He lifts his glass towards her now in toast before he empties it down his throat easily. It is she who flushes instead with pleasure.  

Sansa lifts the glass to her lips once more and this time, she enjoys the sweetness mixed with the tart. She feels her insides start to warm and hum, and she clutches her glass now to her chest as they wander across to another circle of implements. 

“This here,” Petyr explains now, his expression once again unreadable, “is Dorne’s biggest and greatest seller. The Dornish Sand Steed in mechanical form. Manufactured by the Martell family, _Vigor_ — for that is a most evocative name for a mechanical steed, is it not? — comes with a selection of special saddles to suit the rider. One can apparently canter, trot, and gallop on _Vigor_ , and its installation in the home promises to heal all kinds of ailments from lethargic livers to crippling corpulence… and, of course, hysteria. Its one glaring fault? It gives every promise of moving independent to its rider, but it does not; the different paces are powered by the rider’s own exertions.” 

“Oh!” Sansa exclaims at the last, and tries valiantly not to make manifest her private disappointment. 

“Indeed,” smirks Petyr, “it is but a child’s rocking horse affixed with a leather dildoe that masquerades poorly as a pommel installed by the blind —if you will pardon the crassness of plain speech, m’lady.” 

Sansa shakes her head, but gestures with her hand for him to continue. 

In the next half hour, the Maester makes his introductions to the latest in scientific invention. Sansa is amazed by the dizzying array, for in here stands a miniature of The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations… but whose subject is confined only to that which may move a woman emphatically and abundantly. 

The Greyjoys out West, for instance, swear by the healing wonders of their Douche — a hydriatic hysterical cure, where a large volume of icy water is emptied into a vat over the course of the treatment. From the vat, a thin stream is to be forced at high pressure by an internal combustion engine upon the unclothed patient’s pelvic region from a distance no less than fifteen feet across the room and for no more than five minutes. Benefits of such hydriatic massage include the refreshment of the skin, the hygienic quality of the treatment, the eventual paroxysm if the treatment meets with success, and the expedience of receiving an immediate washing down thereafter.  

“It is cumbersome,” Sansa observes, wrinkling her nose as she stares at the different hoses from the ceiling. “I do not know that I would like to be so drenched. And at a clinic! Why, the mopping between patients would harry your nurses.” 

“Indeed,” Petyr concurs. “And what about the home?” 

“What about!” Sansa exclaims. “Is there a bathroom outside of the Keep and Highgarden that would be sufficiently palatial for such an endeavour? Not even the bathrooms in my beloved Winterfell could cater to such extravagance and distance. Why, the number of servants it would take to ferry water to and fro! As to its aim and administration… I would have to prevail on my lady's maid and hope she has good eyes and sturdy hands… I _suppose_ it can be managed, if one were truly in need of 'inviting the lady juices down'. But it is _most_ inelegant and impractical, I should think.” 

“As do I,” Petyr replies, inordinately pleased already that his research subject should be filled with such frank and incisive womanly insight. 

They move on now to survey other Hysterical inventions. A table with a cut-out where the pelvis may be lodged and receive massage by metal and leather pads powered by steam. There is another — a musical vibro-massager that is moved by a spring-driven motor; its therapy only lasts as long as the first movement of the late Marillon’s shortest concerto. Sansa lips naturally shape into a wondrous O as she contemplates the likes of tissue oscillators, vibratory forks, and simple concussors that pound at a spot like a little hammer. The apparatus of vibrating wires truly alarms her most; its clips hold apart the inner lips of a woman’s commodity so that thin copper wires may be administered to the moistened flesh therein. Powered by a small current, the patient hopes to be sparkled back to normalcy. Petyr has grave misgivings of its efficacy and mercifully, he does not demand that she samples the ware. 

Instead, they return to the first and Petyr now gently instructs his research subject to ready herself for the experiment. 

“I can only hazard a guess as to the effectiveness of these implements. Our first advantage is that none of these inventors had sought the opinion of their patients in order to inform their design; these apparatus were chiefly compiled after scientific observation alone, and their improvements made only after failing to elicit the purge. But I have _you_ now. You, who might tell me how and when and where…” 

She had slipped behind an oriental folding screen and, after divesting herself of her underclothes, now lightly steps towards _Vigor. It is, as Petyr says, like a child’s wooden horse with the most unusual saddle!_ Sansa beholds it in wonder. The entire contraption sits on a wooden platform and the back of the mechanical beast reaches just above her waist. Already, the pommel is slickened with aromatic oils and Petyr assures her that this would be _Vigor’s_ maiden ride. 

“How shall I proceed?” she wonders aloud, sitting sidesaddle as is the proper way and at once, Petyr sees the flaw of Oberyn Martell’s mechanical beast; they are made for Dornish women who sit astride and whose sensitivity to all that is chaste and pure and seemly in the world is severely numbed by their patriotic pursuit of pleasure. 

“You will need to sit astride the beast, Sansa,” he bids her now. “Like you did _Midnight_.”  

She nods, dutiful and eager to please and he swallows again as she lifts her skirts so that they sit above her bare knees in order to afford her the mobility; she lowers herself now most carefully, but the pommel retracts into the saddle. His clinical eye assesses the difficulty and almost instantly understands the cure. Now all that remains is to teach her through it; he desperately schools his face to a blank as he instructs her thus. 

“You will need to lean forward, Sansa. The pommel shows itself when the front legs are leaned upon. At the next opportunity, do try to settle yourself gently over the length of it so that it reaches towards… your… womb.” He stares at her and he waits as understanding lights the cobalt blue of her eyes. 

“I do not know… that I am rightly made for _this._ ” She stares down at the protrusion now in wonderment and not a little fear. 

“You are,” he assures her. “Your body is made for babies, remember? But come… fall on the horse’s neck now, and lean toward me. If you can, m’lady… would you lift yourself off the seat of the horse? Stand on the stirrups — yes, exactly that. Good girl…”  

Against the neck of the mechanical beast, Sansa buries her face. Her buttocks are lifted thus from the back of the horse. _I am a circus act!_ she grimaces silently. Here she nearly stands, straddling a creature ornamented by a most obscene protrusion. Her knees are bent, her skirts as good as abandoned for all the good they did for her modesty now. And the Maester, well… 

“Easy there,” he croons into her ear, and she breathes deeply and inhales both the leather of the horse and Petyr’s own particular scent. Her eyes are squeezed shut, but she lifts her bottom higher even as she suddenly feels his skilful fingers graze the skin of her thighs, even as she feels the tips of him work her softly and oil her sweetest spot… He croons reassurance as she starts to calm, to feel herself come to ease from his ministration. Her juices start to flow in earnest, and then she feels sufficiently warmed and liquid. She feels his heated hand on her rump, as it moves up to the fleshiest part of her derrière, as he steers her bodily so she feels the pommel nudging her entrance and he parts her flesh, wrapping her voluptuous lips around the head of the pommel. And with his quiet instruction, she lowers herself, sinking down the length of the leather with a sigh. 

“Rock as you wish, Sansa. At the pace you want…” 

“Slowly,” she chokes and cries out suddenly when her foot slips from the peddle, when the horse lurches forward and in so doing, thrusts into her suddenly and hard. 

“Take care, Sansa…” he warns, a little afeard that she may overdo it finally and inflict upon herself an injury. "Is the rocking motion effective?” 

“It is…” she gasps, “… satisfactory.” 

“Is the pommel adequate?” 

“I had feared it was too big,” she admits now, “but the more we are mutually acquainted, the better it feels.” 

“And what about the length.” 

“It could be improved on.” 

He hides a grin, but starts to take notes. He watches as she tries to hide the way she grinds herself into the saddle, as her pique starts to build. 

“What distresses you, m’lady?” 

“I… I…” And she struggles to say. Propriety is not her impediment now; she is far too intimately involved at present to pay heed to her manners, her modesty, and indeed her dignity. No, it is the parlance. She lacks the words. 

“I feel… as if I would like to work towards a crisis, but that I cannot even begin,” she finally laments.  

“And how does this compare to the massage?” 

“It is different,” she admits now into the horse’s neck. “The profound sensations, they each have their beginnings apart from each other. I wish the two — that is, your massage and the pommel — that they may be combined satisfactorily. Certainly, I am pleased with the present… volume… of sensation. It is quite fulfilling,” she blushes again, even as the pommel slides back into her folds, even as he watches her mount her mechanical steed and work its haunches with a steady increase of vigour.  

He watches her, and his cock, his length, his own pommel is most empathetic and bereft.  

“But…?” he returns to the science.  

“But…” And now she turns those cobalt eyes so they are affixed to his own. And she stares at him as he watches her hungrily. She bites her lip and with a strangled cry, a confession: “ _Yes_ …” 

“What changed, Sansa…” His voice has grown husky but perhaps she does not note his own struggle. 

“I…” And it looks as if she wars with herself, the words stuck horridly in her throat and he longs to see them now, to hear their utterance. Her deepest, darkest confession, he suspects. The steed squeaks from her exertions.  

“You…?” 

“Please…” she whispers, beseeching him. But then she reaches out suddenly and catches his wrist, pressing his hand to her breast.  

He cups her now, his palm molded to the curve of her. He stares into her eyes, understanding her need more than even she can say. And then his fingers dig into her flesh, even through the brocade of her gown. He cups her — hard — and silently waits as the pommel finishes her, as she comes on her saddle with a strangled gasp. 

The horse stills quite suddenly, even as the hard walls of reality close in, even as she feels the Maester release his grip, his eyes darting away to calmly regard his notes.    

“Forgive me,” he says coolly now, his eyes still married to the page. “I was too rough in my—“ 

“No,” she is quick to demur. “You were perfectly helpful.” 

“ _Vigor_ is a success?” he enquires nonchalantly. But she shakes her head, which surprises him. 

“I cannot imagine such a contraption in my home,” she explains. “Nor in a maester’s clinic. It lacks the seriousness that must accompany good medicine, else it slides into a kind of quackery. It is ribald.” 

_Well done,_ Petyr muses. It would do well in a whorehouse. A public house, not a private home. She had come to the same conclusions. Good. 

“And as to its efficacy…” she continues avoiding his gaze once more, “it is tiring to be one’s own maester. The pommel is most unforgiving, not like human flesh at all. In truth, I cannot promise to reach much success on my own. For as you have seen yourself, well... you are still indispensable to the ultimate inducement of my crisis.” 

_A most encouraging session_ , Petyr thinks, his heart strangely warmed. 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45334647462/in/dateposted-public/)

It is just touching on eventide when Petyr hears the knocking at his window, and catches a glimpse of pale blue silk as it passes by. 

“Maester,” calls out that familiar, enchanting voice. “Maester Petyr… are you there?”  

_She must know that I am,_ he thinks, for he had just turned the gas light on, and lit several candles beside. He comes by way of his kitchen and makes his path to her in haste. Speedily he opens his door, having first ascertained that she had arrived alone. 

Her handmaiden, her coachman are left waiting as is their usual practice, but Petyr is hesitant nonetheless and concerned for her reputation and his own.  

“You take a great risk, m’lady!” he chides gently, even as he tugs her in by her elbow, even as he wills himself not to pull her full and flush into his arms so he may devour her mouth after months of toying with her netherlips. 

“I have intelligence,” she gravely tells him now. “There is a spy in your midst.” 

He frowns, even as he leads her back to his office where he had been previously installed. She makes herself comfortable in her usual chair and he places his lamp between them now, his expression solemn. 

“What can you mean?” he invites her to say, and she proceeds to tell him a most curious tale, one involving — of all ladies — the newly married and crowned Queen Consort, bride of the heinous child King Joffrey Baratheon.  

“Margaery… that is, Queen Margaery,” Sansa chastens herself, “she suffers most severely from Hysteria. She has been _such_ a comfort and a strength to me.” And Petyr bites back a knowing quip, for Queen Margaery’s childless marriage to the late Renly Baratheon, cousin of the child King, was once the subject of speculation and spectacle. _As Sansa’s own might soon well be_ , thinks Petyr darkly. 

“Margaery… she cannot hope to visit with the Grand Maester, for she rightly suspects him of being the Queen Mother’s eyes and ears. I have seen, in my time at the Keep, how Grand Maester Pycelle loves Cersei…” 

“He also claims to abhor the more modern ways of treating Hysteria,” Petyr supplies, disdain twisting his mouth. “His modesty and outrage, though touching, is but a hypocrite’s masquerade of virtue: Pycelle fucks Chattaya’s highest grade of whore twice a week.” 

Sansa’s eyes are orbs. 

“Your dear sister is wise to keep her distance,” Petyr muses. “But do continue your tale.” 

“I did not tell her of you,” Sansa confesses now, and the light from the lamp mercifully obfuscates the telltale flush of her neck. “I should have,” she continues in earnest. “Were it not for my selfishness, I might have prevented this!” 

“What has happened?” Petyr asks, ignoring for a moment that Sansa had just nearly professed a form of jealousy.  

“She visited with Maester Varys and he, after ascertaining her complaint, proceeded to minister to her… Except… well…” And it is now that Sansa is flushing in earnest, the words stalling in her throat once more. 

“Sansa…” Petyr coaxes gently. “I am a maester and a professional. I am acquainted with all manner of human behaviour and remain unaffected by the workings of the human body. You may speak plainly, and I will not think you uncivilised.” 

She nods and takes a breath in before it all comes out in a torrent of words. 

“He used his fingers… And at first, her account resembled how you treated me before, where you are gentle and you start from the… curtains of my sex. But then he forced his fingers into her channel and… and… from what my sister describes… It appears to be the poorer rendition of how you massaged me before. I refer specifically to the occasion where I… where I had purged my seed that first time.” 

“Go on,” urges Petyr softly. 

“Well then… Margaery is in great discomfort. There is blood, she said… but that is not the worst of it! For the Maester then proceeded to place the littlest of his fingers into… into…” 

Petyr’s expression is phlegmatic, though he can now fairly guess her meaning.  

“Do you mean to say that Varys attempted to enter his finger into the other sacred orifice of a woman — the channel that cannot possibly result in children?” 

And all that Sansa can do is nod.  

“I see,” is all Petyr says, reaching out now to pat Sansa’s knee paternally. “You did well, little one. You were right to come to me.” 

“Womenfolk…” Sansa fairly whispers. “We talk, and I have long heard of other therapies and the methods of maesters. Your skills are unique, and even then, my time with you has proved to surprise me. That thing you did… the speed in which my paroxysm was summoned, the suddenness of my juices when they were invited downward… I _knew_ , as soon as Margaery told me, that Varys had endeavoured a mimicry of your art. Except he also added to it a most cruel twist.” 

_Or rather, he had made an ignorant and botched attempt, the fucking eunuch._ Petyr is quietly furious. Little finger in the arse. Petyr has yet to try that one on Sansa. And there is only one person still alive who is intimate with such knowledge... 

“Why would he do that!” Sansa demands to know now, standing up to pace his office. “Who else knows what you do! For I swear, Petyr! I did not tell a soul. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that this is your craft. That you had somehow shewn me something private and singular. I knew not to speak of it, even though you never said a word thereafter or bid me to hold my peace. Are there others?” Sansa asks now, her eyes searching his own. “Who else knows what you do?” 

Her voice has risen in pitch and Petyr stands now, calmly reaching out to take her hands into his and clasp them. 

“Sansa,” he soothes. “M’lady, this is my craft, as you say…” He tucks a wayward lock of fiery hair behind her ear. It is most unprofessional, in a long train of most unprofessional moments. He cups her porcelain cheek.  

“When I minister to you… it can be easy to mistake exertion for passion… To confuse gratitude with something infinitely more... profound.” 

She leans into the warm palm of his hand but she does not look into his eyes.  

“However,” he continues and he feels her body stiffen, even though all he touches is her face, her hand. 

“However, you were right to sense that the treatment you speak of was extraordinary.” 

“You mean…” Sansa starts, her eyes flicking up at once to meet his. 

“I have never ministered to my other patients in that way. Not until you.” 

“Do you mean that, Maester?” 

“I do.” 

They are already moving, even as they speak. Wordlessly making their way across, him propping open the door to his surgery, her as she fumbles with her coat, her bonnet, him as he helps with the stays of her underthings, her as she fairly clambers up his table, as she eagerly lies still, clutching the sides of the recliner. 

There are no words, but both of them are only too aware of what they each desire. He will touch her and press her and fuck her _hard_ with his longest, his ablest, his strongest fingers until she drenches his hand, until she screams her ecstasy, until his poor neglected cock _leaks_. 

She sighs when she feels him sink into her, when he fills in the gaping crevice of her person, of her _soul_ in that single motion. He has not tied her down and she uses her advantage now as she rocks against his hand. "Touch me," she pleads, even though her walls surround his fingers. "Spare no thought for my natural fragility. I am woman, yes... but I am stronger than I look... and I want you... to..." 

The words leak from her throat and die out. His eyes darken with her every syllable and he covers her mouth roughly as he leans down and over her. 

"Fast and hard," he rasps, "m'lady." 

And then she is crying out into his hand as she feels him — every brutal thrust, every jab, every stake. There is a strange little patch within her, a button, a spot that causes her heart to throb so hard she thinks she might faint. It is the most glorious feeling, overwhelming and harsh and dark and delicious... 

He releases her suddenly and she cries out again, though this time in anguish as she feels him leave her body, as she is suddenly bereft. But then she sits up now, propped up upon her elbows and to her great consternation, the good maester is once again in strife and agony. 

"Aaarrr!" he calls out in anger and anguish combined, once again cupping his elbow, his beautiful fingers twisted like a gnarled tree. "Fuck..." she hears him mutter again, before he turns to face her, his visage one of terrible rage.  

"Petyr..." she whispers. 

"Useless!" he spits, washing his hands. "I am useless!" 

"You are not!" she pleads. "You are an inventor, a wunderkind, a scholar, a brilliant maester!" She lowers her voice. "A most empathetic man." 

She watches the rise and fall of his chest, vexation writ clear in the planes of his most handsome face, in the clench of his fists by his side. She watches each laboured breath as helplessness wrings her dry, and only finds an increasing calm in herself as his breaths slow, as the colour fades from his face, as the lines smooth and the anger leeches from his skin. 

"I only want to help you," he murmurs and it breaks her heart a little that the only man who would care how she feels is a celibate maester paid to nurture. 

"You already have," she reassures her treasured healer, reaching out to take his injured hand into hers. She is in grave danger now of wetting it with her tears, but they thankfully remain within their wells. For now. 

"Lie back, Sansa..." he says after a time, and she looks up and is amazed. 

"No, Maester!" she forbids him. "You will need your rest! You cannot hope to start again before you are healed!" 

"There are other ways," he replies with an air of mystery and Sansa wonders if the talented maester is not ambidextrous as well. _Could he use his left hand,_ she marvels. But he lies her down and parts her legs. 

"Do you trust me?" 

"Do not hurt yourself!' she insists. 

"I will not," he promises, before settling her head to lie flat on the leather. 

Silence before she feels him descend along the plane of her body, before she feels his eyes devour her or worship her form, she cannot tell. But she revels in the intensity of his gaze, barely able to confess to herself how very much she adores her doctor. 

It is only when she feels his heated breath on her sex that her head starts to swim and her heart starts to falter. 

The moment his lips meet her own, the moment his tongue enters therein, the moment the heat of his mouth melds with her secret, Sansa is lost. Her breaths are laboured, speech robbed clean as he probes her and tongues her, as every decency is cast aside... and every voluptuous, lascivious passion rushes into its place. 

Sansa moans. And then her breath hitches when she feels his nose graze higher, when at last his perfect smirk brushes over her pearl, before his lips part, the tip of his tongue licks... before he _suckles_. 

The music from her soul leaves her throat in sighs and broken pleading, her hips lifting ever higher if only to offer herself as a feast. She is in ecstasy, and the juxtaposition of the former, of his _fingers_ , to... this! There cannot be two more disparate sensations, and yet she feels the familiar creep of her pleasure. Her juices flow and coat his tongue, and the thought alone of him lapping her like a placid, dangerous animal is almost enough to induce the strongest shudders. 

When she is overcome at last... When she writhes on the table, her milky thighs clamped tight around his ears, her calls soft and wanton in the orange glow of the surgery... She trembles for an exquisite eternity, even as his hands creep up to pin down her shaking form, even after when he nudges along her inner thigh and lays kisses down her seam... 

"Have I been... intemperate?" he finally asks when she returns to earth, when her skirts are straightened once more and her underthings are demurely fastened. "I fear... that this form of treatment is adventurous, even by the most modern medical standards." 

"You are a marvelous maester," Sansa is quick to soothe. There is a quietness, a calm that descends as both patient and healer wander off in the forest of their thoughts. 

"I wonder..." Sansa starts, and she turns sharpish now to look at the Maester. "What you did... when you suckled..." She does not even blush at the word, so earnest is she in the nurturing of a seedling idea. "I wonder... if you could not invent a contraption that could mimic the movement." 

She looks very pleased as another thought takes seed.  

"Maester Petyr," she pronounces now. "I should like it very much if you would come by my apartment tomorrow. Make a house visit. I have something to show you and I promise you will not regret it." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait there! Been flattened by work and then buggering off to relax by Netflixing... I have been chipping away at this chapter during the week, and I'm real glad I'm finally ready to post it. 
> 
> BTW, I wish I can say I made most of those implements up. But I didn't. They're real, they were used on women and even men, and even if modern experts are divided on what Hysteria was and how doctors historically treated them, you gotta admit that some of these are pretty out there.


	5. Chapter 5

He had always known, of course, that she is Otherworldly. That if and when their paths cross, it is only because one or the other — the sacred, the profane — had breached the impossible wall between. As infamous as he has become; as much as his fierce intellect, perfected talent and clever industry has distinguished him among maesters in King’s Landing — nay, even in Westeros… as frequently as he treats with the wives and mistresses of the prominent and pecunious, Petyr never forgets he is lowborn. Son of No-one. A minor lord of silent rocks and smelly sheep. Trade.  

While Sansa… She is _Nobilité_. Aristocracy. Wife of a foreign Marquis, sister of the new Queen, daughter of Eddard Stark – the _nth_  Duke of the North and Earl of Winterfell. She is highborn and thus already woven into the fabric of remembered time. 

For she is a goddess.   

Petyr would not be so foolish, so simple as to imagine an attachment with any number of his estimable patients. He had grown immune, or so he had thought; the bush of a woman becomes garden-variety after the first two hundred or so — little arouses the maester now. And yet there has only been One Other to capture his imagination so thoroughly, to divert his attentions so resoundingly, to _affect_ him so… 

There is the keenest _déjà vu_ when he steps through her smart uptown apartment, when he is shown into the drawing room wherein he waits with careful, shallow breaths… He inspects the art in the room, already deducing their vintage and value, his erstwhile encounter in another Great House once upon a time affording him the most tremendous insight. Nostalgia and a strange sort of numbness seep in as Petyr inspects the likeness captured within a brushed gold frame.  

“My mother,” Sansa explains now without preamble as she slips into the room. It is most surreal to see her mesmeric maester in her own home, so arresting in his dark suit and silvering hair, bowing to her now as if he were a genteel visitor. A gentleman caller. 

“We were playmates once,” he tells her now. His tone is light, but his voice has deepened, the low rasp confiding. “Your aunt Lysa, your uncle Edmure, your mother Cat… and I.” 

“I did not know!” 

“’Tis was a long time ago, and we were children. I was your grandfather’s ward.” He smirks now. “He did not like me much and eventually, I had to make my own way. As you see.” 

There is a silence that follows, heavy and swollen with unsaid, unasked things. Sansa’s manners war with her curiosity. But then he turns and looks at Sansa, holding the frame up to the side of her face. 

“The family resemblance is there, of course. No one who had the fortune of making Cat’s acquaintance can ever deny her essence in you. But you surpass your mother. I say this as a man who knew her very well, who was her truest friend.” 

Sansa’s mouth falls open but words fail her once again, as her maester’s confession stirs within her a strange soup of feeling — confusion first, then sadness and curiosity, but also pride… and deep envy. Were that she could also be numbered as his truest friend!  

_She is stark, raving mad! Truly!_ Sansa remembers suddenly to collect her mouth. To shut it tight, along with all manner of girlish passion and insipid sentiment. Petyr — the _Maester_ – is her mother’s own contemporary. Sansa would do very well to remember _that_. It will explain his indulgence of herself, of course. He shows her special favour, only because of his love for her late mother. _Stupid, stupid girl..._

_But he says that you surpass her,_ another voice whispers beguilingly. 

He is very near her now, his breath even and cool upon the nape of her neck. She stands before him, so very close though they never touch. Not this way. Never fully clothed. He stands behind her and it is as if her every fibre calls out to him. As if she were built of nothing but iron shavings and he were the magnet.  

He is not so very tall; in her heels, they match each other in height. If she were to turn now, their lips would meet. She is sure of it. Sansa stares down at her hands and imagines his covering her own, pulling her to him with a force that will melt her knees and set her womb on fire. What had he said once? That it is easy to confuse gratitude with something infinitely more profound.  

She is not so confused, she thinks now. She has never been surer of anything in her life. 

Sansa turns now, only but a very little — but it is enough. They face each other now, neither daring to breathe. _So close, so close, so very close…_ He never blinks, but she can see the flecks of green in the gray and she knows she will dream of him again tonight. 

She tilts her head and closes her eyes… 

Petyr pulls away suddenly and she is instantly bereft and much bewildered. But then she hears him: the butler approaching their door once again. 

“My Lady, you had requested that I tell you of the Puffing Billy.” 

“Thank you, Pate.” Sansa keeps her face towards the window. Pate stands at the doorway as if hesitating to enquire as to his Ladyship’s strange request. But Sansa, as if sensing this, stays quiet and unmoving till at last both she and the Maester feel the butler’s quiet retreat.      

The mood is surely changed now, and Sansa turns and smiles brightly at her maester as she announces the true reason for her summons. 

“It is the most marvellous contraption,” she enthuses. “He comes once a week and I have never seen anything like it.” 

_Puffing Billy_ turns out to be a machine pulled along by a horse and cart, and powered noisily by an internal combustion engine. A piston pump is energised to pull air through a cloth filter, and the whole contraption is so large and unwieldy that only the tubes may enter the building by insertion through the windows. With great effort, dirt is thus withdrawn from the fabrics and carpets of the room — a feat currently impossible for the upper levels, which is just as well as that they find themselves in the drawing room on the first floor. For then, Petyr may observe first-hand the work of the miraculous automated Vacuum Cleaner. 

“Feel it,” Sansa invites her maester, barely concealing her smug delight at teaching him something for a change. “See how the air moves backwards? The drawing motion of the air… it could resemble—“ 

“A suckle?” Petyr muses aloud.  

“Imagine a miniature of this,” Sansa continues, enthusiasm only mounting. “Would it not be the most gentle therapy? Would it not spare your hands?” 

“It might,” Petyr allows. Their eyes lock and Sansa is thoroughly gratified to find her maester approves. In fact, he looks all but ready to eat her. 

“Are there others like this?” And Sansa frowns. She had not expected such a question, but is more than eager to please.  

“Dyanna,” she calls the scullery maid next door who almost jumps from being recognised at all, and from the Lady of the House! “Dyanna, have you knowledge of any household implements we possess that cleans like the Puffing Billy?” Sansa enquires patiently.  

It takes a while for the mousy girl to return, but she does and with the Head Housekeeper in tow. It is a manual vacuum cleaner they bring now and what it lacks in power and might, it makes up for in simplicity and stealth. Petyr tries it now when Sansa succeeds eventually in dismissing her staff from the room so they can find themselves alone once more. The manual cleaner is a large wooden box affixed with a handle and the entire thing is set on small wheels. Back and forth, back and forth Petyr moves the cleaner as he observes the same fate to the carpet: the dirt (a loose thread) is readily removed and upon closer inspection within, Petyr discovers a pair of double connected bellows; movement in either direction serves to create a pulsing vacuum. Twice the suck each way.  

“Fascinating,” he murmurs when Pate returns to announce the arrival of the Dowager Duchess of Highgarden. 

“Olenna?” Sansa pales, her hand fluttering to her face. “Here? _Now?_ ” But at the gentle touch of Petyr’s fingers on her elbow, Sansa stills and steels herself. 

“Show her in,” she commands her butler haughtily, who silently acquiesces. It is but a formality; Olenna Tyrell sweeps into the room briskly, capable as always of showing herself in. Her raw silk skirt is in the older fashion and embroidered with large damask roses.  

“What is this?” she gestures now to Sansa and Petyr.  

“This is Maester Petyr,” Sansa replies, as Petyr stands straighter and bows handsomely. 

“Lady Olenna. What a pleasure.” 

“I have heard about you,” the older woman confesses, even as she nods and sniffs.  

“Only good things, one hopes,” Petyr smiles.  

“You hope,” Olenna Tyrell returns, which is an answer that gives nothing away all while leaving the faintest taste of an insult, which is the very sort of answer that amuses Petyr most. “But why are you here?” she demands to know now before swivelling her gaze to pin her new granddaughter like a butterfly for study. “Are you unwell, child?” 

“No—I…” 

“Or is it the other?” And at that, the older woman narrows her eyes at the flat stomach of Loras’s bride. “Has that pretty boy done his duty at last?” 

“His duty!” Sansa replies and chastens herself privately. She had not meant for her words to mock and accuse. 

“Aye, his duty,” Olenna replies grimly. “I see from your face and your words that Loras has yet to put his hand to your plough.” Petyr coughs lightly, and Olenna glares at the interruption and his temerity. “But why have you not called on Lomys to attend you?” she insists, stepping closer to Sansa in a vaguely accusing fashion. “He is our family’s maester, after all! There is no need to approach a stranger.” Olenna turns to stare at Baelish pointedly. 

“I am unused…” Sansa explains, "that is, Maester Lomys’s skills are well known, but I… What I mean to say is—" 

“Spit it out, girl!” 

“Lady Tyrell is no stranger to me,” Petyr interjects smoothly now. “Or rather, I am no stranger to her family. I have treated members of the Tully family for years. Let not my relative youth belie my true experience, Lady Olenna. Indeed, the Lady Arryn has been a longstanding patient these thirteen years. When Lady Tyrell found herself unwell, it was only natural that she turn’d to someone in whom her own aunt trusts. And trusts often.” 

“I had heard the Lady of the Vale is a lunatic cow and a bloody-minded recluse who still feeds her insipid grown son from her shrivelled udder whilst she guides her enemy-of-the-moment toward her wretched moon door. The opinion of such a creature is _hardly_ a glowing reference.” 

“She is a singular woman who prefers her own special company,” Petyr agrees, "but her frequent health retreats to King’s Landing remain her constant exception.” 

“I see,” Lady Olenna remains unconvinced but having lost interest some time ago, the answer satisfies for now. 

“Just as well you are checking on your health,” Olenna returns to Sansa. “You have a long trip ahead of you, after all.” 

“How do you mean!” Sansa exclaims, suddenly dismayed.  

“Why child, why else am I here but to farewell my Margaery and to oversee your return to Highgarden! This apartment is to be retired and shut, but there is a particular order to the grizzly business and I am loathe for you to make a hash of it. Loras is hopeless for this endeavour because, of course, he is a _man_ and men know nothing except to fight wars and contemplate their cocks between joustings.” 

More details that Olenna thinks to rain upon the young mistress of the house soon follows, and Sansa now looks beleaguered and resigned. The Maester is as good as dismissed and all but forgotten, or at least explicitly ignored; Petyr makes his excuses now, and it is all the reason Sansa needs to remove herself from the Dowager’s company. 

“I will see you out myself,” Sansa insists, and sweeps out the room as decidedly as she dares. Petyr follows closely behind her, his footsteps brisk and certain, his hands clasped behind his back. 

“Do not look so woeful, m’lady,” Petyr bids her quietly when they are finally almost alone, when his own phaeton is summoned and readied. 

“It will be months before I can return,” Sansa sighs. “At least a quarter year.” 

“Then I will endeavour to bring your brilliant suggestion to life,” he smiles softly now, “if only to test its efficacy on my only and favourite research subject.” 

“Petyr,” she whispers now, not daring to chance a glance at the drawing room window where she is almost certain to find the Dowager Duchess watching. “I wonder… Will you write to me? I should like to know how your invention is going.” 

“I will not, sweetling.” His eyes are sorrowful, even if his voice is resolute. “Your safety is paramount. Do not write to me.” 

“I will miss... your treatments.” 

“We will meet again,” he smiles kindly, even as he prepares to climb onto his phaeton, even as he looks up and waves insouciantly at the old bitch in the window. Olenna finally turns and walks away. 

“Thank you, Sansa.” Petyr stretches his hand out now. There are too many eyes, there are so many ears. He offers his hand stiffly as is professional. A handshake is businesslike, after all. 

“Thank you, Petyr,” she whispers as she lifts his favoured hand to her trembling lips instead, as she remembers its continual sacrifices for her happiness, as she kisses it sweetly, her back turned towards the windows. It is over too quickly. He climbs into his phaeton now, rounding his horses as he clicks his tongue. It is an abrupt departure and wholly unsatisfactory; he spares her no backward glance. And yet, had he no impediment nor sense nor strategy, he would have gladly taken her with him and damned his Orders and her empty fuckless marriage to the seven hells.  

But he is no classical romantic hero, and so he sits and thinks instead. 

 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/162326344@N04/45216546181/in/dateposted-public/)

It takes a full five months before he ceases to look for her behind every autumnal mane. He would see a cascade of red, an aristocratic turn of nose, a lady of imperious height and graceful gait, and he would feel himself stop and lose breath even though he knows he is no longer a man of hope and childish fantasies. 

Hopers and dreamers are usually felled by men like him now. Lovers are the worst of all, for they live as if they have everything to lose. _No more,_ he breathes in relief.  

He assures himself, even as he labours long hours and well into dark, even as he agonises over the precise degree and pressure, as he pulls apart great heaving machines and pores over their design and potential, as sweat slickens his back and face, as he shirks his silks and soft wools for coarser fabrics that allow him movement, that hide and soak in stains of oil and grime with the use. 

He is fully immersed in his work and it helps him put her aside for the moment. Except that is the greatest irony of all, of course: he never can. Because all that consumes him, all that inspires his passion, the very point of it all is the successful extraction of her fullest pleasure through mechanical means.  

Petyr will admit to himself later on that he did falter when he saw her. When he emerged from yet another private interview with the Lord Hand only to come face to face with his muse. The Lady Tyrell had been just standing there, a junoesque figure beside her sister, the Queen Consort. Petyr’s trained eye had noted the thickened waist of Queen Margaery, and had not missed the raised waistline of her gown. While Lady Tyrell, he had observed with a curious kind of elation, was as sylph-like as ever, her belly smooth and hollow. Markedly devoid of child.  

Neither Sansa nor Petyr had given rise to any suspicion that they had been introduced before. He had watched as she had dropped a low curtsy to the Lord Hand, who in turn had bowed stiffly at both women before sweeping past them toward the Red Keep.  

Petyr had followed his lead. But he had been sure, as he passed, that his fingertips should find her palm and stroke the length of it.  

* * *

The cobblestone is cleaner than she remembers it, the service entrance smaller, the kitchen bigger again, and then she is in his parlour once more. There are faces she does not recognise. New nurses, some young, and a man among them. Or perhaps he is an apprentice maester. An acolyte. 

The young man — so beautiful, so angelic of face as to easily rival the palest beauties of the court at King’s Landing — nods his assent. He moves with a strangely feminine grace and appears to intuit who she is, or rather her importance to his mentor. Lady Tyrell is shown to the more luxurious seat in closest proximity to the Maester’s office. She waits now, hands clasped before her in an excellent study of the gentlewoman, even as every muscle in her delicate body is in peril of collapsing in a nervous twitch. 

Five months. Nearly a half-year and she is undoubtedly the worse for it. She had been starved of something — an understanding friendship, a closeness, a meeting of minds even while she came to admire his intellect and acumen greatly. An intimacy never repeated with another. 

She had been starved but now... sitting here, on this velvet cushion, mere paces from _him_ … Sansa is _ravenous_. 

"Lady Tyrell…” a most dear and familiar voice calls behind her now and she rises to her feet, turns around to face him and swallows her nerves. 

Maester Petyr looks well, his own eyes shining, even as he turns now to the Beautiful Man and murmurs his orders. 

“See that I am not disturbed. We will be in the surgery for a good length of time.” His eyes pierce that of his acolyte’s, as if to press his meaning. “Not for anything or anyone, Olyvar."  

Sansa feels a strange flutter at his words, and she passes the Beautiful Man now without daring to look upon his face. Her back is straight, her face serene as she passes the Maester as well, but her heart stutters when she feels the warmth of his hand pressed firm against the small of her back. 

She watches as he serves her tea. The lemony confection she enjoys had been brought in especially for her, he informs her now with a glint in his eye. _Where’s Ros_ , she asks when curiosity finally loosens her tongue and her neck prickles when the Maester calmly explains her fall down the stairs on her way home one dark and rainy evening. “Broken neck,” he goes on to say even as his expression seems to darken with the retelling. “A young, beautiful life cut short.” 

“That is horrible!” Sansa cries, her hand pressed at her mouth. 

“Yes,” he muses, dropping the second sugar in her tea cup. "Ros had been a most diligent pupil and a true shadow of my work.” He almost smirks before continuing with, “but I have Olyvar now.” 

They sit in companionable silence, their feet barely grazing, words unsaid but hanging in the air nevertheless. Until finally she asks, “Have you been well, Maester? I see your business takes you to King’s Landing now.” 

“Indeed,” Maester Petyr replies, his voice dropping confidentially now. “Progress,” he confesses with a small satisfied smile. “I have made several breakthroughs. And if you were to indulge me this evening, I would ask that you be my honest research subject once more. That you would allow me to incorporate my inventions in our consultation.” 

Sansa can only manage to nod her consent. Her heart is beating so wildly now, she is sure he can hear it without use of his stethoscope. 

“This way,” he guides her as she stands, and then she hears the smile hidden in his voice when he says, “I trust five months away has not dulled your memory.” 

“Not at all, Maester.” 

“Neither has it mine,” he replies softly, a husk in his voice that sends a shiver down her back. 

She lies herself down as gracefully as she can, splaying herself once more on his examination table that had once wrought such incomprehensible pleasure from her very depths. There is no denying it now — she is a bundle of nerves, and even before he touches her, her face is hot, her sex swollen and juiced with anticipation. All this — so wonderfully familiar, and yet she feels a clamminess of fear. Would they continue as they had, she wonders now. Not a word had passed between them these five long months and yet here she is again on his table, laid out as if like a feast. Is she presumptuous? 

It feels bizarrely like she were awaiting judgement. Or returning to a lover. Sansa does not know which.  

But then he swims into her view and the smile he wears is most warm and welcome. In his hand is a tool the likes of which she had never seen before.  

“This is my mechanical percussor,” he explains, even as he shapes her fingers around the grip. It is surprisingly easy to hold, and not as heavy as it looks. There is a small protrusion that ends with a rounded tip.  

“There are many like this at present,” the Maester goes on to say, even as he lowers her hand, as she feels him guide the contraption until it hovers just above her sex. “Indeed, my esteemed colleague and competitor Varys has one rather similar. I don’t mind saying that I borrowed the rudimentary principles, but then added my own flourishes.” 

“And what would those flourishes be?” breathes Sansa now.  

“Different heads,” the Maester replies, tapping the rounded tip. “These are removable parts. The entire contraption comes with an assortment of attachments or  _Vibratodes._ Feathers. Materials hard and soft, pointed and flat. And then there is a small battery in the works. It is not yet ready, but in the next rendition of the Percussor, I hope to power it with a small and mobile dynamo."  

"But more than that,” he adds, his voice growing animated with the telling, "I also experimented greatly with percussion speed and more importantly, resonance. A high, tinny vibration and the sensations become so shallow as to frustrate the womb. Too much — too hard, too deep, and it becomes torture.” His face hovers over hers now. “Three-thousand vibrations in a minute,” he pronounces softly. Proudly. “That is the optimal speed, I’ve come to discover. Any faster, and it will hurt the patient. Any slower, and its efficacy greatly decreases to the equivalent of a human masseur, who cannot hope to exceed 350 vibrations in the same length of time — let alone sustain it for minutes on end. But this…” And she hears it now as he flips a switch somewhere. As the contraption springs to life. As it starts to pummel her sex. Her hips jerk and before Sansa can hold herself back, she hears herself let out a soft sigh. 

“Seven heavens!” she moans as she starts to feel a most familiar ache, as her toes curl, then flex, then point. 

“Try it,” she hears him urge her. “Guide the percussor yourself.” 

Sansa needs no further encouragement. She moves the rounded tip now, angling it until it reaches a most sensitive spot. She tenses again, then feels herself sink into the table once more as pleasure starts to mount. And mount again.  

Quiet, save for the hum of the percussor and the thrumming of her heart.  

“How do you feel?” she eventually hears him say before her eyes fly open suddenly. 

“It is here!” she cries out, as if startled. “It cannot be!” 

“Give into it,” he murmurs, stroking her face. He does not blink as he stares down at her. Their eyes are held by invisible, invincible threads and when she feels the _giving in_ , the way her body seems to fall apart from inside as her breath catches in her throat, as a myriad of contradictions wash over her — of tightness and freeing, of confusion and clarity, of sin and sanctification, of lust and love… 

She drops the percussor and hears as the hum turns into a clatter on his wooden floor. The Maester retrieves it calmly and sets it back on its resting place in the box at the side of his examination table. 

“So soon,” she finally sighs, and then shakes her head. “Almost too soon. I was surprised.” 

“I thought you might be,” the Maester agrees. He does not look upset, but he takes his quill and scratches his observations across the page. “It will extract your paroxysm rather quicker than a midwife or maester — or indeed a husband — could. It will have its uses and appeal to a different set of enjoyers.” 

“Enjoyers?” 

“Aye, Sansa…” He retrieves another contraption now, and this one looks curiously like a miniature billow for the fireplace.  

“I will explain, but first… this. The culmination of your most inspired idea to borrow heavily from your vacuum cleaner.” 

He places the billow in her hand now, and Sansa realises upon closer inspection that it is a double connected billow affixed with a mouthpiece. He slips her fingers through two small loops so  her palm is now cupping the contraption comfortably. 

“Each movement by hand extracts a motion within at double the speed,” he explains now, his warm hand on hers, guiding the contraption once again to the mouth of her sex. The mouthpiece settles over her swollen pearl and he gently rocks her hand now. Immediately, she is greeted by a most recognisable sensation of a _suckle_. 

She hisses and struggles not to swoon. 

“You can direct the speed as you wish,” he says quietly, his hand rocking hers. “The billows form a vacuum, and if you desire it, you may rock harder so as to induce a firmer suck.” He duly demonstrates, eliciting yet another gasp and sigh.  

“This contraption,” he smiles into her eyes, “is wholly inspired by how you prefer to take your pleasure, m’lady.” 

“My pleasure?” she falters now, feeling a blush touch her cheeks. “Don’t you mean my hysterical paroxysm?” 

“No,” is the simple reply, his green-grey eyes unblinking and unapologetic. “Your _pleasure_. For this contraption considers all your preferences. It is gentle, soft, attentive to your needs, discreet, quiet… and I hope at least a mimicry of past treatments.” 

At once, a flash of the same pair of eyes staring at her hard and heatedly from across the plane of her body, his mouth otherwise engaged as he sups from her flesh… 

Sansa blushes furiously even as she feels herself start to tense and relax in that most delicious and familiar way. 

Silence as she learns to work the billows, as she finds the exact pressure and pace, as she settles in. He lets her guide him, his hand still covering hers. With his other hand, he brushes her hair from her face, strokes her cheek, smooths her brow. He cannot stop touching her face and even though his other hand lies so very near her sex, it is the hand navigating the planes of her countenance that takes far more liberties. That feels infinitely more intimate. 

“What have you decided to call this one?” she manages to gasp between pants. A most incongruous thing, conversing about the mundane when her body is yearning for that most profound release.  

“I think I’ll call it _The Coaxer_ ,” he grins just as she falls apart, her teeth clenching, her lips buttoned, only too mindful that though his surgery is nestled in the bowels of his clinic, Olyvar and his many other nurses might hear her. He strokes her hairline as she is overcome, as she shudders and struggles valiantly to hide her deepest groan, as he drinks her crisis in. 

It is unnatural, this seemingly cool observation while she is undone. And yet strangely exciting in its unnaturalness.  

“I intend to sell these,” he finally explains, as if they had been discussing his business intentions for a time. “Maesters are largely inventing to augment the services of their practice. But I intend to create a factory that manufactures these for mass consumption.” 

“So not just for patients or highborn, then.” Sansa surmises correctly, a thoughtful look crossing her face. 

“I intend to make this as affordable as possible. To place the remedy in the… eager hands of the masses.” He smirks at the play of words. 

“And your practice?” 

“My hands are not what they used to be,” he sighs, holding them up in the light as if they were separate implements and not still attached to his person. “This business venture will render a significant part of my practice obsolete. But then, I _am_ obsolete. I cannot be a healer of Hysteria with hands like mine.” 

“But surely your inventions will half the effort at least!” 

“It is time to change. I still have my knowledge, even if I cannot be a practitioner.” There is something else he is at the cusp of saying but holds back. Mercifully, Sansa does not appear to have noticed his hesitation. 

Instead she seems herself to be hesitating with her words before she finally sits up and stares at her Maester, her expression serious. 

“Your inventions are elegant and inspiring,” she pronounces. “Indeed, you must be proud and if you are not, then I must tell you myself how proud I am of you. But…” she adds and he stills visibly now, suddenly tensed.  

She leans into his shadow now, her face but an inch from his own. His breath stills. 

“But…” she whispers, “as wonderful as these are, I would far prefer the doctor to the aide.” 

“And why is that, Lady Tyrell?”  

“Call me Sansa,” she insists before answering his question with a soft press of her lips to his own. 

The briefest pause as Petyr’s mind connects to the significance of the moment. And then he is pressing his lips back on hers, his hand slipping into her thick red hair, his mouth turning slightly before his lips part and his tongue plunders.  

And Sansa remembers she is ravenous. 

He is already easing her back down on the table, though whether it is his doing or her own, Sansa cannot say. He clambers up now, the leather recliner unused to the weight of two even though heavy Lady Lollys frequents his surgery. She helps him eagerly, feverishly, her hands hot and clumsy on his shirt buttons, even as he does the same for himself below.  

And in all that time, they pant out their justification. 

"An extension of my treatment, is all…" murmurs Sansa. 

"My hand, as you know…” shrugs Petyr helplessly. 

"Yes, your hand… it needs rest still?" 

"Aye. Much rest." 

The sound of soft trousers hitting the floor piques Sansa’s interest and she slides off the recliner now, curiosity pulling at her. And then she _sees_ , she _feels_ the length of him now, all of it. Where previously, his own member had only ever been hinted at, the swollen head of him grazing her knees once, twice, the only evidence of his discomfiture from the discreet rearrangement of his trousers… Here now was Petyr the Man in his entirety. A bed of dark curls wreathe the base of his thickened and slickened manhood. 

And Sansa is ravenous. 

There is no justification left when her lips wrap around his smooth and fleshy mushroom, when he hisses and slams his palm on the wall, when he fights every impulse to thrust fully to the back of her throat. She is clumsy, but that only serves to wildly excite the Maester all the more. Silence as he bites his lip, as he stifles his own groan. It is one thing for Sansa to whimper and weep. The clinic is used to the onset of paroxysms. 

They are, however, unused to hearing their maester become quite undone himself. 

_This will not do,_ he thinks as he suddenly withdraws, as she looks up from her resting place, every inch the willing and tempting supplicant. He helps her to her feet, and then lifts her to the edge of the table. He drags her to him, pulling her roughly by her legs. The height is perfect and he can scarcely control his emotions, his trembles as he approaches her... 

"What is a man’s poker?" he is saying with eerie calm now, almost as if in a dream or caught up in delirium. "Is it not yet another extension of myself? No more than an arm, a leg, or indeed a thumb, a toe... a finger?" 

At the last, he slips two of his own into her sex suddenly and curls them forward, calling her wordlessly to come to him, to come _for_ him. She whimpers again and pushes her hips greedily into his hand. But he withdraws after a few more relentless jabs, not wanting to bring on the dreaded cramp. Not at this time. 

"And if I am to be… fatigued in my doctoring endeavours," he continues conversationally, "should I not improvise?” 

“Oh please improvise!” she begs now and he indulges her fully, sliding his length full tilt into her tightness, the both of them drawing a shuddering breath of delight.  

And then they begin, this base and natural dance that no longer pretends, that no longer can hide. The table judders and shakes, the rhythm loud and lewd. And in their exertions, they hide their cries and pants and feral grunts by fusing their lips, their mouths together in a searing, never-ending kiss.  

She could not have hoped nor imagined that she could feel that rapture for a third time. But perhaps that is what happens when a lady stays away for five months and is made ravenous. When she finally unravels once more… when she finally comes and this time from his cock, Petyr knows all is lost. He is found out. For there is no way that either he or Lady Tyrell can persist in lying to themselves as to the true nature and cause of her Hysteria.  

* * *

“I beg your pardon?” Petyr blinks, even as the gears in his mind start to shift and turn. He casts a quick glance at the clock on the wall, at the dusk sky. _If he has really come, he hopes not to be seen,_ Petyr quickly surmises. 

“The Marquis… Lady Tyrell’s husband… he is here.” Olyver’s voice is soft, his eyes serious.  

“I see.” Petyr purses his lips in thought. And then, “would you be so kind, Olyvar, as to show him in? Make him comfortable in my office, will you. Give him every care.” 

He waits for a time in his surgery, busying himself so as to map out several possibilities. Should Loras be angry — and the boy is known to have a short temper — Petyr might need a pinch of sedative so as to calm his passions over his wife. For that is what Petyr assumes, of course. That he is here on account of his wife. Why else would he come, after all.  

Perhaps Olenna had whispered in his ear about Petyr’s visit five months ago. Though he can hardly imagine the crone doing anything so subtle and sweet as _whispering_. Had Sansa return’d home from her last treatment with a telltale spring in her step?    

_Why now,_ Petyr wonders in consternation.  

“To what do I owe such an honour?” Petyr begins, sweeping low in a bow. The younger man is even more beautiful in the flesh, all lazy curls and natural ringlets to drive every maid to distraction or envy. His thoughts immediately drift to Sansa. What the Reach must think of her, to steal away such a handsome specimen, to be wedded and yoked to such a legend! His own acolyte Olyvar is pretty, but Loras is perhaps the most beautiful man Petyr had ever encountered in his forty years. He would be gripped with fierce jealousy, and he not also noticed how Loras’s eyes seem to wander over to Olyvar. How Olyvar returns these furtive gazes. 

_Interesting_.   

Lord Loras Tyrell wears an expression that is exceptionally haughty this evening and Petyr waits patiently for his visitor to begin.  

“My wife was here yesterday.” 

“She was,” Petyr agrees calmly. 

“And she is here often, I know.” The man with the face of a demigod lifts his chin in challenge. “Do not try to lie to me. I know of her visits.” 

“I would not dream of hiding anything, Lord Tyrell.” Petyr opens his palms in a show of surrender and meekness. “I had not presumed that your wife’s visitation was in any way secret from you. I had only thought her discretion was for the preservation of her own privacy and your dignity.” 

It works. Loras is mildly taken aback; mayhaps he assumes Petyr would deny it all. The Maester clasps his hands before him, keeping his head lowered in a false show of deference. 

“I pay for her visits, you know.” Loras skewers the maester before him and presses his meaning like the tip of his sharpest blade. “I know how she frequents your establishment. I know how she esteems your work.” 

“Lady Tyrell is a faithful customer.”  

“That is one way of putting it,” Loras narrows his eyebrows. “She is dour and sullen in our home, but as soon as she returns from your treatments, she is all sweetness and delight.” 

Petyr smiles. “Then I am glad that my treatments are sufficiently curative.”  

“What is it that you do here!” 

“I merely coax your lady’s womb back down to its natural place, Lord Tyrell.” 

“Where does it go meanwhile!” 

“Only the gods know.” Petyr raises his eyes skyward. “The woman’s body is a temple and a mystery. As I am sure _you_ have come to discover for yourself, as a married man.” 

That subtle rejoinder was met with a stiffness. Loras flicks a glance toward Olyvar and it curiously resembles a small apology.  

_An attachment,_ Petyr thinks, hiding a smirk. Better and better. If it is Olyvar the Marquis wants, then perhaps Petyr may be able to move him still… 

“Hysteria is a common ailment in women, but increasingly also in men, m’lord…” murmurs Petyr now.  

“Are you suggesting I have a womb!” Loras cries, bristling with indignation. “How dare you!” 

“Not at all, my Lord. While Hysteria is a condition of the uterus for women, it is a condition of the mind for men. When men’s minds are severely taxed, it can sometimes be of great help to calm the mind through treatment, m’lord.” 

Loras seems assuaged, and even taken aback. No one had ever ventured to suggest he be called a wit before, much less by a scholarly maester. 

“And what is the treatment, exactly?”  

“A series of soothing massages as well,” Petyr replies benignly. “Olyvar, my most able assistant here, is _particularly_ gifted in relieving the stresses and frustrations of a noble man like you. We can arrange a home visit. That is,” Petyr hesitates, “if that is agreeable to you, m’lord.” 

They stare at each other, two long-legged and beautiful men, each gifted with strong hands, sensuous and generous mouths, and the sort of muscular leanness that serves to distract. That is not at all unattractive to the other. 

It takes but a moment for Loras to nod mutely.    

“Good,” Petyr purrs, nodding to his acolyte slightly. “Olyvar will show you out and make his plans with you. Are you happy for your wife to continue her visits here in the meanwhile? I can arrange a more agreeable price that will take into consideration both of your repeated and frequent patronage.” Never mind that Sansa already pays him in many other ways.  

Again, Loras nods mutely and Petyr smiles as he shows Lord Tyrell out the door. 

_It is almost too easy_ , he muses to himself now. Petyr frowns suddenly. _Yes,_ he thinks. _Almost too easy._

* * *

Lord Loras Tyrell climbs into his carriage now and it is only when it pulls away that his grandmother quizzes him with a raise of her eyebrow.

“It is as you say, Grandmother.” Loras huffs. “That Maester fiddles with my wife, and he does not even deny it. He plays with her womb! I would lance the man, just for his insouciance, his… his _lack of repentance!_ ”  

But Olenna Tyrell only clicks her tongue. “Do not be daft, boy!” she chides. “You and your temper. If it were your sister, I would hardly need to spell it out for you now. Petyr is your perfect alibi!” 

“He is old and makes my flesh creep, the way he stares like that. Gods know what he is like with Sansa when they are alone.” 

“Oh please,” scoffs his grandmother impatiently. “Spare me the grand theatrics. It is not as if his carnal attentions to your wife truly offend you, Loras!” She lowers her voice. “If the maester is _truly_ fiddling with your wife, then let us prepare to make the most of it. His hair is brown from my recollection, is it not?” 

“It is. Though not as light as mine. Mine is verging on chestnut, while the top of his head almost resembles the wings of a raven.” Loras shudders.  

“That is a slight impediment, true. Though I have heard that Lyanna Stark and even Sansa’s own sister Arya had dark hair.” 

Loras shakes his head. “What does it matter anyway! Why do you make such a fuss of hair!”  

Olenna’s eyes are sharp as steel now and glint just as brightly. She stifles the urge to slap the back of her grandson’s head. _And to think he came from the same womb that bore Margaery…_  

“It matters a great deal when you are to sire an heir, child.” Olenna’s tone is sharp and that is finally enough to sober Loras. “If Sansa were to bear you a son, it will silence our detractors once and for all.” 

“You mean if she were to bear _his_ child?” 

Olenna cackles. “The boy understands!” she rejoices and tousles his brown curls fondly.  

“B-but… will Sansa herself allow this deception?” 

“Our continued forbearance and strategic blindness will only keep your wife grateful and in our debt,” Olenna replies. “Why prick with thorns in these things, when you can beguile and cajole with sweet-smelling roses? Both are weapons equal to the task. But one’s pawn comes more willingly when persuaded by a convergence of ambitions. Your sister has understood this since she was in _nappies_ , my child. Do keep up.” 

“Margaery told me yesterday that Tywin plans to make Petyr his Grandmaester.” 

Olenna pinches her lip to hide her pleasure, her thoughts flicking back to Margaery instantly. Wordlessly, she sends yet another prayer to the gods that her beloved young queen bear the Crown a son and heir. _Even a twin, a spare._ And _then..._  should Joffrey trip over his own stupid forked tongue and meet his own untimely demise... Why, it would be most propitious to find the new Grandmaster himself concurring with Highgarden's own suspicions as to the young King’s cause of death.   

And Margaery will be Queen Regent, then.  

“Better and better,” Olenna smirks as the carriage trundles on.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's taken me ages to get this chapter out. A confluence of events such as a crazy work week; a fleeting distraction as I dash off to write and publish a Halloween fic; interminable hayfever; and a grand detour as I salivate over Matthew Goode's chiselled jaw and sexy plummy accent collectively transpired to keep me from completing this fic. 
> 
> Also, cowardice. I had planned this ending for some time, but didn't have the chutzpah in ages to pull it off. As sometimes happens in my fic, I get rather immersed in the world and then before I know it, there's some semblance of a plot. But I am determined to have a cut-off somewhere. And so here it is!
> 
> So thank you for waiting. This shall remain one of the stranger things I thought to write about. But it has been a tremendous journey and I'm glad you're here with me. BTW, it's a small milestone but I thought I'd share it just the same: this marks my 20th completed fic in AO3! xx

**Author's Note:**

> I love chatting to readers. So please, drop me a Hello if you're not too shy!
> 
> I am also on [Tumblr.](https://0pheliaraine.tumblr.com/) I have a [writing schedule](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=o817rtudvnf415pb5388sq7r1k%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Australia%2FSydney>schedule%20of%20fic%20releases</a>%20which%20is%20also%20viewable%20in%20the%20<a%20href=) that gives an indication of other works coming up. This calendar is also viewable in the [ desktop version of Tumblr](https://0pheliaraine.tumblr.com/writing-schedule)


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